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ONE  GENERATION  OF  A  NORFOLK 

HOUSE 


Frontispiece 


ONE  GENERATION  OF 
A    NORFOLK    HOUSE 

A    CONTRIBUTION    TO 
ELIZABETHAN     HISTORY 


BY 

AUGUSTUS    JESSOPP,    D.D. 

Formerly  Head  Master  of  King  Edward  the  Sixth's  School,  Norwich 

Hon.  Fellow  of  Worcester  College,  Oxford  ;  Hon.  Fellow  of 

St.  John's  College  Cambridge  ;  Hon.  Canon  of  Norwich 

AUTHOR  OF 
"THE  COMING  OF  THE  FRIARS,"  ETC.,   ETC. 


THIRD    EDITION,    REVISED 


NEW    YORK 

G.   P.    PUTNAM'S    SONS 

1914 


J^ 
'r 


First  Edition  .  1878 
Second  Edition  .  1879 
Third  Editim  .    .    1914 


c  • 


^  C     ♦  9         4 

•  t  •  •  •  • 


{All  rights  reserved). 


SI   QUID 

IN   HOC   LIBELLO 

VEL   PR^SENS   VEL   POSTERA   ^TAS 

CEDRO   HAUD   INDIGNUM 

JUDICAVERIT 

MEMORI^   VIRI   HONORABILIS 

FREDERICI     WALPOLE, 

NAUT^   MILITIS   SENATORI8 

AMICI   NUNQUAM   NON   DESIDERATI 

TRIBUTUM   SIT 


414560 


PREFACE    TO   THE   THIRD 
EDITION 

For  a  long  time  past  it  was  the  intention  of  the  author 
to  bring  out  a  new  edition  of  this  work,  for  which  a  desire 
had  been  expressed  both  by  personal  friends  and  students 
of  Elizabethan  history,  but  failing  health  at  last  made  it 
impossible  for  him  to  undertake  the  task  of  supervising  its 
passage  through  the  press.  In  furtherance  of  his  wishes  this 
edition  has  therefore  been  prepared  from  the  memoranda 
and  notes  made  by  him  during  the  thirty  odd  years  since 
the  original  publication  of  the  work,  which  have  enabled  the 
present  editor  to  revise  the  previous  text  by  making  such 
alterations  and  additions  as  the  author  has  indicated  to  be 
proper  and  advisable. 

Temple, 

15th  August,  1913. 


PREFACE   TO   THE   SECOND 

EDITION 

The  reception  accorded  to  the  First  Edition  of  this  volume 
was  to  me  a  great  surprise:  I  was  prepared  for  anything 
but  a  literary  success.  Practical  men  assured  me  that 
for  a  book  whose  very  title  seemed  to  promise  that  its 
main  interest  would  be  local,  and  the  prominent  personages 
in  it,  members  of  a  single  family,  I  could  expect  but  a  very 
limited  circulation.  Prudence  suggested  that  no  more 
copies  should  be  printed  than  were  subscribed  for,  and 
the  first  issue  was  limited  to  one  hundred  and  sixty. 

I  discovered  too  late  my  mistake,  and  can  only  express 
my  regret  to  my  many  friends  and  correspondents  for 
the  disappointment  it  occasioned. 

As  the  original  Edition  did  not  and  could  not  cover 
its  expenses,  and  as  I  could  not  afford  to  publish  another 
at  so  costly  a  rate,  I  am  glad  that  an  enterprising  Publisher 
has  been  found  willing  to  bring  out  the  book  in  a  cheaper 
and  more  convenient  form. 

In  this  reissue  some  errors  have  been  corrected  and 
some  few  omissions  supplied.  I  shall  be  grateful  for 
suggestions  or  intelligent  criticism,  whether  friendly  or 
hostile. 

The  School  House,  Norwich, 
1st  March,  1879. 


1 


PREFACE    TO   THE    FIRST 
EDITION 

It  is  sixteen  years  since  I  heard  for  the  first  time  of  Henry 
Walpole,  the  Jesuit  Father,  who  was  put  to  death  at  York 
in  1595.  Under  his  portrait,  as  it  hung  in  the  Library 
at  Kainthorpe  Hall,  the  conversation  would  often  turn 
to  that  strange  phase  of  the  conflict  with  Eome  which 
was  exhibited  in  the  latter  half  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  reign 
— which  for  the  most  part  historians  have  slurred  over  so 
carelessly,  and  yet  about  which  there  is  still  so  much  to 
learn. 

It  was  in  1866  that  the  Hon.  Frederick  Walpole  seriously 
suggested  to  me  that  I  should  undertake  the  writing  of 
the  Jesuit  Father's  hfe.  I  had  by  this  time  begun  to  see 
clearly  that  it  would  be  impossible  to  narrow  the  subject 
to  the  limits  of  a  single  biography,  unless  the  significance 
of  the  incidents  related  and  their  bearing  upon  the  history 
of  the  time  were  first  explained  and  clearly  apprehended. 

The  further  I  proceeded  in  my  inquiries  the  more  evident 
it  became  that  my  task  would  require  me  to  elucidate  the 
merely  personal  narrative  by  dwelling  on  matters  which 
I  had  good  reason  to  believe  were  but  little  known  to  us 
of  the  Church  of  England ;  and  it  was  the  more  necessary 
to  do  this,  because  no  historian  of  any  mark,  except  Dr. 
Lingard,  has  yet  dealt  with  that  portion  of  Queen 
Elizabeth's  reign  which  was  subsequent  to  the  Armada, 
and  because  even  Mr.  Froude  curiously  ignores  much 
that  was  going  on  during  the  last  few  years  with  which 
his  volumes  are  professedly  concerned. 

In  1873  I  edited,  with  somewhat  copious  notes,  a  collection 


li 


•    « 


'^ .   •..•:: 


ONE   GENERATION  OF 


•  i/i  •,*»:•  ol'ifneieeri  .letters  of  Henry  Walpole,  the  originals  of 
whic^  'are  now  in  the  archives  of  Stonyhurst  College.  Some 
will  be  disappointed  that  these  letters  are  not  given  fully 
in  this  volume.  They  were  in  the  first  instance  printed 
only  for  private  circulation  at  Mr.  Walpole 's  sole  expense, 
and  it  was  his  wish  that  the  collection  should  always 
remain  a  "Book-rarity."  On  such  a  point  his  wishes  are 
to  me  law ;  nevertheless,  the  substance  of  this  collection 
has  been  incorporated  in  the  following  pages,  and  it  must 
be  confessed  that  the  literary  value  of  the  letters  them- 
selves is  but  small. 

In  the  notes  appended  to  the  several  chapters  I  have 
made  my  acknowledgment  to  those  who  have  so  readily 
and  so  liberally  assisted  me  in  the  course  of  my  work. 
Only  they  who  have  themselves  had  occasion  to  leave 
the  beaten  track  and  to  grope  among  manuscripts,  consult 
original  sources,  and  hunt  up  for  evidence  and  information 
in  holes  and  corners,  know  how  generous  and  how  chivalrous 
scholars  and  men  of  learning  are  when  they  find  that  a 
student  is  honestly  unsparing  of  himself,  and  is  not  satisfied 
with  being  a  superficial  compiler.  To  me  the  right  hand 
of  fellowship  has  been  held  out  in  no  grudging  fashion 
by  men  of  European  reputation  who  yet  had  never  heard 
my  name  till  I  applied  to  them  for  such  help  as  only  they 
could  afford.     I  have  never  applied  in  vain. 

There  is  one,  however,  to  whom  I  am  under  deeper 
obligations  than  to  all  others — less  for  any  direct  and 
special  aid  than  for  that  sort  of  influence  which  the  master 
exercises  over  the  scholar,  the  veteran  over  the  tyro.  This 
book  would  have  been  more  worthy  of  its  subject  if  Mr. 
Richard  Simpson  had  lived  to  watch  its  progress  through 
the  press.  His  enormous  knowledge,  his  vigorous  and 
sagacious  criticism,  his  wonderful  memory  and  minute 
acquaintance  with  the  undercurrents  and  byeways,  the 
buried  secrets  and  curious  tangles  of  Elizabethan  history, 
were  possessions  which  belonged  to  him  pre-eminently, 
and  which  he  seemed  to  value  chiefly  as  they  qualified 
him  to  assist  others  in  the  pursuit  of  historical  truth. 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE 


In  the  course  of  the  same  week  death  snatched  him 
from  us  and  that  other  the  nobly  born  but  yet  nobler- 
hearted  friend  to  whom  this  volume  is   inscribed. 

One  of  the  greatest  difficulties  which  I  have  had  to  con- 
tend with  has  been  the  extreme  rarity  of  some  of  the  books 
which  it  has  been  necessary  to  consult,  and  the  consequent 
difficulty  of  procuring  them  at  any  cost,  or  even  of  obtain- 
ing a  sight  of  them  at  any  library.  Of  all  the  works 
mentioned  in  Dr.  Oliver's  Collections  as  written  by  Michael 
Walpole,  not  one  is  to  be  found  either  in  the  British 
Museum,  the  Bodleian,  or  the  Cambridge  Libraries.  There 
are  probably  not  ten  copies  of  More's  History  of  the  English 
Province  at  this  moment  in  England.  As  to  Cresswell's 
little  Life  of  Henry  Walpole,  it  is  probably  unique  ;  and 
more  than  one  of  Parsons'  minor  works  even  a  biblio- 
maniac would  count  himself  fortunate  in  obtaining  twice 
in  a  lifetime. 

It  was  with  a  painful  recollection  of  my  own  mistakes, 
loss  of  time,  bootless  journeys,  and  provoking  waste  of 
money,  that  I  determined  to  append  the  short  list  of  the 
rarer  books  which  I  have  had  occasion  to  use  and  refer 
to.  A  solitary  student  with  limited  resources,  and  cut  off 
from  access  to  the  larger  libraries,  except  at  intervals  of 
some  months,  works  at  very  great  disadvantage,  and  I 
would  gladly  spare  others  some  of  the  trouble  I  have  gone 
through  in  the  long  process  of  simply  learning  where  to  look 
for  information.  The  list  is  after  all  a  meagre  one,  and 
I  have  not  named  such  works  as  any  one  can  consult 
almost  anywhere ;  but  I  must  warn  those  who  may  feel 
any  inclination  to  go  at  all  deeply  into  the  history  of  the 
period  with  which  this  volume  deals,  that  they  must  make 
up  their  minds  to  be  book  buyers,  and  not  be  frightened 
at  the  prices  they  will  have  to  pay.  It  was  at  the  peril 
of  a  man's  life  that  he  ventured  three  hundred  years  ago 
to  be  in  possession  of  some  of  the  books  which  this  list 
contains,  and  if  we  want  to  possess  them  now  we  cannot 
hope  to  get  them  below  their  market  value. 

A  volume  of  little  more  than  three  hundred  pages  will 


14     ONE   GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE 

perhaps  appear  to  some  but  a  small  result  of  nearly  fifteen 
years  of  research.  How  much  easier  it  would  have  been 
to  double  the  bulk  they  know  best  who  are  best  qualified 
to  act  as  my  critics.  To  tell  what  somebody  else  has 
told  before  is  easy :  my  ambition  has  been  to  make  some 
small  additions  to  our  previous  knowledge,  or  at  least  to 
throw  some  little  gleam  of  light  upon  what  heretofore 
was  obscure,  misrepresented,  or  misunderstood. 

The  School  House,  Norwich, 
June  1878. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 
LIST   OF  SOME   OF    THE   RARER   BOOKS    REFERRED   TO   IN 

THE   NOTES         .  .  .  .  .  .17 

INTRODUCTORY  .  .  .  .  .  .27 

NOTES    .  .  .  .  .  .  ,38 

CHAPTER   I 

THE   WALPOLES   OF   HOUGHTON        .  .  .  .46 

NOTES    ,  .  .  .  .  .  .55 

CHAPTER   II 

SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE  DAYS     .       .       .       .63 
NOTES  .       .       .       .       .       .       .78 

CHAPTER   III 

THE  EXCOMMUNICATION  AND   ITS   RESULTS  .  .         85 

NOTES    .  .  .  .  .  .  .       105 

CHAPTER   IV 

THE  JESUIT  MISSION  TO   ENGLAND  .  .  .113 

NOTES    .......      130 

CHAPTER    V 

THE   KINSMEN  ......       140 

NOTES    .......       150 


i6     ONE   GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE 


CHAPTER    VI 

PAGE 
JOHN   GERARD  .  .  .  .  .  .157 

NOTES    .......  172 

CHAPTER   VII 

THE   MISSIO   CASTRENSIS      .....  182 

NOTES    .......  196 

CHAPTER   VIII 

THE  RETURN  TO  ENGLAND       ....  201 

NOTES  .......  220 

CHAPTER   IX 

FATHER  GERARD'S    "  MUCH   GOOD"               .                 .                 .  222 

NOTES    .......  238 

CHAPTER  X 

CAPTURE  AND   IMPRISONMENT         ....  249 

NOTES    .......  270 

CHAPTER   XI 

THE  TOWER   AND   THE   RACK             ....  272 

NOTES   .......  290 

CHAPTER  XII 

THE  TRIAL  AND  THE   SCAFFOLD    ....  295 

NOTES   .                .                .                ....  308 

CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  GATHERING  OF  THE   FRAGMENTS        .  .  .311 

NOTES   .                 .                 .                 .                 .                 .                 .  334 

INDEX       .  .  .  .  .  .  .343 


A  LIST  OF  SOME  OF  THE  RARER 
BOOKS  REFERRED  TO  IN  THE 
NOTES 

Abbot,  Robert. — A  Mirrour  of  Popish  Subtilties  ;  Discovering  sundry 
wretched  and  miserable  evasions  and  shifts,  which  a  secret  cavilling 
Papist  in  the  behalf  of  one  Paul  Spence,  Priest,  yet  living  and  lately 
prisoner  in  the  castle  of  Worcester,  hath  gathered  .  .  .  Written  by  Rob. 
Abbot,  Minister  of  the  Word  of  God  in  the  city  of  Worcester  .... 
London,  1594,  4to. 

[The  author  was  brother  of  Archbishop  Abbot,  and  became  eventually 
Bishop  of  Salisbury.  Spence  was  one  of  those  ordained  Deacon  in  Queen 
Mary's  reign.  He  received  Priest's  Orders  at  Douai,  and  returned  to 
England  as  a  Missioner ;  but  the  fact  of  his  having  received  his  first 
Orders  here  before  the  accession  of  Elizabeth  seems  to  have  served  to 
extenuate  his  subsequent  indiscretions.] 

Allen. — De  Justitia  Britannica  sive  Anglica,  quae  contra  Christi 
Martyres  Continenter  exercetur.  Ingoldstadii,  Ex  officina  Typographica 
Davidis  Sartorii,  Anno  1584. 

[See  under  Burleigh.] 

Cardinal  Allen's  Defence  of  Sir  William  Stanley's  Surrender  of 

Deventer.  Edited  by  Thomas  Heywood,  Esq.,  F.S.A.  Printed  for  the 
Chetham  Society,  mdcccli. 

A  Brief e  Discoverie  of  Doctor  Allen's  Seditious  Drifts,  con- 

teined  in  a  Pamphlet  written  by  him,  concerning  the  Yeelding  vp  of  the 
towne  of  Deuenter  (in  Ouerrissel)  vnto  the  King  of  Spain,  by  Sir 
William  Stanley.  (By  G.  D.)  London,  Imprinted  by  I.  W.  for  Francis 
Coldock,  1588,  4to. 

Aquepontanus  (Bridgewater)  Joannes. — Concertatio  Ecclesias  CatholicEe 
in  Anglia  adversus  Calvino-papistas,  et  Puritanos  sub  Elizabetha  Regina 
quorundam  hominum  doctrina  et  sanctitate  illustrium  renovata  .  .  . 
Augtas  :  Trevirorum,  1588,  4to. 

[Bridgewater  was  a  Yorkshireman.  He  was  elected  Rector  of  Lincoln 
College,  Oxford,  in  1563,  being  then  Archdeacon  of  Rochester,  and 
holding  other  valuable  preferment.  He  resigned  it  all  and  left  England 
in  1574.     The  "  Concertatio  "  was  first  published  in  1583.     ".  .  .  .  one 

2  I? 


i8  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

Job.  Gibbon  a  Jesuit,  and  John  Fenne,  having  taken  a  great  deal  of 
pains  in  writing  the  lives  and  sufferings  of  several  Popish  martyrs,  with 
other  matters  relating  to  the  Roman  Catholic  cause  ....  many  things 
therein  being  wanting  or  defective,  one  other,  Bridgewater,  took  more 
pains  in  enlarging  and  adding  to  it  other  matters,  with  an  account 
of  100  or  more  Popish  martyrs  .  .  ." — Wood,  Aih.  Oxon.,  Bliss,  i. 
626.  The  book  is  hard  to  meet  with,  and  of  great  value  for  the 
information  it  contains.] 

Bagshaw,  Chbistopher. — A  True  Relation  of  the  Faction  began  at 
Wisbeach  by  Father  Edmonds,  alias  Weston,  a  Jesuit,  1595,  and  con- 
tinued since  by  Father  Walley,  alias  Garnet,  the  Provincial  of  the 
Jesuits  in  England,  and  by  Father  Persons  in  Rome.    4to,  1601. 

[Though  I  have  not  dwelt  on  the  business  of  the  Appellant  Priests 
in  my  volume,  yet  it  is  impossible  to  understand  the  relations  of  the 
Catholic  hierarchy  in  England  towards  the  Jesuits,  without  obtaining 
some  acquaintance  with  the  history  of  the  remarkable  dispute  which 
divided  the  Catholic  body  in  England  at  the  close  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  Much  light  has  been  thrown  upon  this  subject  lately  by  the 
publication  of  the  letters  of  Father  Rivers  in  Mr.  Foley's  Records  of 
the  English  Province,  series  i.  Dr.  Bagshaw  was  a  personal  enemy  of 
Father  Parsons  all  his  life.] 

Bartoli. — Deir  Istoria  della  Compagnia  di  Giesu.  L'Inghilterra  parte 
dell'  Europa  descritta  dal  P.  Daniello  Bartoli  della  medesima  Campagnia. 
4to,  Bologna,  1676. 

[I  have  always  referred  to  this  edition :  the  original  folio  was  published 
at  Rome  in  1667.  ] 

Bell,  Thomas. — The  Anatomy  of  Popish  Tyrannic :  Wherein  is  con- 
teyned  a  plaine  Declaration  and  Christian  Censure  of  all  the  principall 
parts,  of  the  Libels,  Letters,  Edictes,  Pamphlets,  and  Bookes,  lately 
published  by  the  Secular  priests  and  English  hispanized  Jesuites,  with 
their  Jesuited  Arch-priest:  both  pleasant  and  profitable  to  all  well 
affected  readers.     London,  4to,  1603. 

The  Catholique  Triumph,  conteyning  a  Reply  to  the  pretended 

Answere  of  B.  C.  (a  masked  Jesuit),  lately  published  against  the  Try  all 

of  the  New  Religion At  London,  printed  for  the  Companie  of 

Stationers,  4to,  1610. 

[One  of  the  coarsest  books  of  its  class,  but  invaluable  as  giving  many 
of  the  abominable  stories  which  were  current  at  the  time.] 

Beeington,  Jos.— The  History  of  the  DecHne  and  Fall  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Religion  in  England,  during  a  period  of  two  hundred  and  forty 
years,  from  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  to  the  present  time;  including  the 
memoirs  of  Gregorio  Panzani  ....  by  the  Rev.  Joseph  Berington. 
8vo,  1813. 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  19 


[The  book  was  printed  in  1793,  but,  I  believe,  was  not  published  till 
twenty  years  afterwards.  The  introduction,  extending  to  111  pages, 
is  concerned  in  great  part  with  giving  the  history  of  the  dissensions 
between  the  Secular  Priests  and  the  Jesuits  in  England  at  the  close  of 
the  sixteenth  and  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century.  The  author,  a 
Catholic  priest,  was  vehemently  assailed  by  Charles  Plowden,  a  Jesuit 
father,  and  others,  for  the  ground  he  took  up  in  this  introduction,  and 
is  still  denounced  as  "unorthodox."  His  book  is  never  likely  to  be 
republished,  and  is  getting  rarer  every  year.] 

Bristow. — Richardi  Bristol,  Vigornensis,  eximii  sue  tempore  sacras 
Theologias  Doctoris  et  Professoris,  Motiva.  .  .  .  Atrebati,  4to,  1608. 

[There  is  a  brief  life  of  the  author  prefixed  to  this  book,  which  was 
prepared  for  the  press  by  Dr.  Worthington.  Scattered  up  and  down 
through  the  volume  are  curious  scraps  of  personal  history  which  one 
would  hardly  expect  to  find  there.] 

Cecil,  Lord  Burghley. — The  Execution  of  Justice  in  England  for 
maintenance  of  publique  and  Christian  peace,  against  certaine  stirrers 
of  sedition  .  .  .  London,  4to,  1583. 

[It  has  frequently  been  reprinted  and  translated  ;  it  was  answered  by 
Cardinal  Allen  in  "  A  true,  sincere,  and  modest  defence  of  the  English 
Catholics,  that  suffer  for  their  faith  both  at  home  and  abroad,  against  a 
slanderous  libel  entitled  '  The  Execution  of  Justice  in  England.'  "  12mo, 
1584.] 

A  Declaration  of  the  favourable  dealing  of  her  Majesties  Com- 
missioners appointed  for  the  examination  of  certaine  Traitors,  and  of 
Tortures  unjustly  reported  to  be  done  upon  them  for  matters  of  religion. 
1583,  4to. 

Certamen  Seraphigum  Provinci/E  Anglic  pro  sancta  Dei  ecelesia. 

In  quo  breviter  declaratur,  quomodo  Fratres  Minores  Angli  calamo  et 
sanguine  pro  Fide  Christi  Sanctaque  eius  Ecelesia  certarunt, 

Opere  et  labore  E.  P.  F.  Angeli  a  S.  Francisco  Conventus  Eecollect- 
orum  Anglorum  Duaci  Guardiani,  Provincise  suse  Custodum  Custodis, 
ac.  S.  Theologiee  Lectoris  Primarij  concinnatum.  Duaci  Typis  Balta- 
saris  Belleri,  sub  circino  aureo.     Anno  1649. 

[The  copy  now  in  my  possession  was  sold  some  years  ago  at  Sotheby's 
for  seventeen  guineas !] 

Challoner. — Memoirs  of  Missionary  Priests  as  well  Secular  as 
Regular ;  and  of  other  Catholics  of  both  sexes,  that  have  suffered  Death 
in  England  on  Religious  Accounts,  from  the  year  1577  to  1684.  Gathered 
partly  from  the  printed  accounts  of  their  lives  and  sufferings,  published 
by  contemporary  authors  in  divers  languages,  and  partly  from  manu- 
script relations.  ...  2  vols.  8vo,  1741  and  1742. 

[The  author  was  titular  Bishop  of  Debra,  and  his  work  is  invaluable 


20  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


as  a  collection  of  authentic  memorials  of  the  unfortunate  persons  whose 
sufferingslt  details.  A  new  edition  in  4to,  with  some  hideous  engrav- 
ings, has  lately  been  published,  with  an  introduction  of  some  consider- 
able merit  by  Mr.  Law,  late  of  the  London  Oratory.  ] 

Ceeswel,  Joseph.— Histoire  de  la  vie  et  ferme  Constance  du  Pare 
Henri  Valpole,  &c.  .  .  . 
[See  p.  190,  n.  5.] 

De  Backer.— Bibliotheque  des  Ecrivains  de  la  Compagnie  de  Jesus,  ou 
Notices  Bibliographiques,  1°  de  tons  les  ouvrages  publics  par  les  Membres 
de  la  Compagnie  de  Jesus,  depuis  la  Fondation  de  I'Ordre  jusqu'a  nos 
jours;  2°  des  Apologies,  des  controverses  religieuses,  des  critiques 
lit^raires  et  scientifiques  suscitees  a  leur  sujet.  Par  les  PP.  Augustin 
et  Alois  de  Backer,  de  la  meme  Compagnie.  Li^ge,  7  vols.  8vo,  1853- 
1861. 

[This  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  bibliographical  works  ever  published, 
and  is  essential  for  the  student.  The  first  edition  cited  above  is  some- 
what awkward  to  refer  to,  as  there  are  two  indexes,  one  at  the  end  of 
the  fourth  and  one  at  the  end  of  the  seventh  volume.  The  new  edition, 
in  3  vols,  folio,  is  a  considerable  improvement  upon  the  first.  The  first 
volume  was  sent  out  in  1869  ;  the  final  sheets  have  only  just  been  issued. 
Unfortunately  this  important  edition,  which  (after  the  death  of  the  last 
of  the  brothers  de  Backer)  was  completed  by  their  learned  associate 
Charles  Sommervogel,  is  limited  to  two  hundred  copies.] 

Destombes. — La  Persecution  Religieuse  en  Angleterre  sous  le  regne 
d'Elizabeth.  Par  I'Abb^  C.  J.  Destombes,  Superieur  de  I'lnstitution 
Saint-Jean,  a  Douai.    Paris,  8vo,  1863. 

[A  respectable  compilation,  on  which  the  author  must  have  bestowed 
some  pains  and  labour.  It  is  of  course  written  entirely  from  the  Catholic 
point  of  view.] 

Memoire  sur  les  S^minaires  et  Colleges  Anglais,  Fondes  a  la 

fin  du  xvi^  siecle  dans  le  Nord  de  la  France,  et  sur  les  services  qu'ils  ont 
rendus  a  la  Religion  Catholique  en  Angleterre ;  par  I'Abbe  C.  J. 
Destombes,  Directeur  au  petit  S^minaire  de  Cambrai.     Cambrai,  1852. 

DoDD,  Chaeles. — The  Church  History  of  England,  from  the  year  1500 
to  the  year  1688,  chiefly  with  regard  to  Catholics ;  being  a  complete 
account  of  the  divorce,  supremacy,  dissolution  of  monasteries,  and  first 
attempts  for  reformation  under  Henry  VIII.  .  .  .  together  with  the 
various  fortunes  of  the  Catholic  cause  during  the  reigns  of  King  James 
I.,  Kings  Charles  I.  and  II.,  and  King  James  II.,  particularly  the  lives  of 
the  most  eminent  Catholics,  Cardinals,  Bishops,  inferior  Clergy,  Regulars 
and  Laymen,  who  have  distinguished  themselves  by  their  piety,  learning, 
or  military  abilities  .  .  .  Brussels,  1737,  3  vols,  folio. 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  21 

[This  is  the  original  edition,  and  is  very  difficult  to  meet  with. 
A  new  edition  was  commenced  by  the  Eev.  M.  A.  Tierney,  F.S.A.,  and 
carried  down  to  the  end  of  James  I.  It  extended  to  5  vols.  8vo.  At 
this  point  the  work  ended  abruptly,  and  since  then  Tierney's  papers  and 
books  have  been  dispersed,  and  will  never  be  collected  again.  Even 
**  Tierney's  Dodd,"  by  which  title  I  have  quoted  the  book,  is  now 
difficult  to  procure.] 

EcLESHAL. — Kelacion  de  un  Sacerdote  Ingles,  escrita  a  Flandres, 
k  un  cavallero  de  su  tierra,  desterrado  por  ser  Catolico :  en  la  qual 
le  dacuenta  de  la  veinda  de  su  Magestad  a  Valladolid,  y  al  Colegio  de  los 
Ingleses,  y  lo  que  alii  se  hizo  en  su  reeebimiento.  Traduzida  de  Ingles 
en  Castellano,  por  Tomas  Ecleshal,  cavallero  Ingles.  12mo,  Madrid, 
1592. 

[The  date  of  the  licence  for  printing  is  15  Oct.,  1592.] 

FiTZHERBERT. — Nicolai  Fitzherberti  De  Antiquitate  et  Continuatione 
Catholicse  Religionis  in  Anglia,  et  de  Alani  Gardinalis  Vita  Libellus.  Ad 
Sanctissimum  D.  N.  Paulum  Quintum  Pontificem  Maximum.  Romce, 
Apud  Guillelmum  Facciotum,  m.d.c.viii.  sm.  8vo. 

[The  author  appears  to  have  been  Cardinal  Allen's  secretary,  and  was 
of  the  family  of  Fitzherbert  of  Padly.  He  was  a  conspicuous  adversary 
of  the  Jesuits,  and  "  virulently  opposed  Father  Parsons  at  Eome." — Dr. 
Oliver.] 

Gee. — The  Foot  out  of  the  Snare  :  With  a  Detection  of  Sundry  Late 
Practices  and  Impostures  of  the  Priests  and  Jesuits  in  England.  Where- 
unto  is  added  a  Catalogue  of  such  Books  as  in  the  Author's  knowledge 
have  been  vented  within  two  years  last  past  in  London  by  the  Priests 
and  their  Agents.  As  also  a  Catalogue  of  the  Romish  Priests  and 
Jesuits,  together  with  the  Popish  Physicians  now  practising  about 
London.  By  John  Gee,  Master  of  Arts,  of  Exon.  College  in  Oxford,  4to, 
London  (3rd  edition),  1624. 

[".  .  .  Printed  four  times  in  the  said  year,  1624,  because  all  the 
copies,  or  most  of  them,  were  bought  up  by  R.  Catholics  before  they 
were  dispersed,  for  fear  their  lodgings,  and  so  consequently  themselves, 
should  be  found  out  and  discovered." — Wood,  Ath.  Ox.  ii.  391, 
Ed.  Bliss.] 

New  Shreds  of  the  Old   Snare,   containing  the  Apparitions 

of  two  New  Female  Ghosts  ; — The  Copies  of  Divers  Letters  of  late 
intercourse  concerning  Romish  Affairs  ; — Special  Indulgences  purchased 
at  Rome,  granted  to  Divers  English  Gentle-believing  Catholicks  for 
their  Ready  Money ; — A  Catalogue  of  English  Nuns  of  the  late  Trans- 
portation within  these  two  or  three  years.  By  John  Gee,  Master  of  Arts 
.  ,  .  London,  4to,  1624. 


22  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

Harpspield. — Dialogi  sex  contra  summi  Pontificatus,  Monasticse 
Vitss,  Sanctorum,  Sacrarum  imaginum  oppugnatores  et  Pseudo- 
martyres:  Ab  Alano  Copo  Londinensi  editi  .  .  .  Antverpise,  1573. 

[The  real  author  of  this  work  was  Nicholas  Harpsfield.  It  is  curious 
for  containing  the  account  of  the  miracle  of  the  Cross  said  to  have  been 
found  in  a  tree  in  Sir  Thomas  Stradling's  park  in  1559.  The  story 
caused  great  excitement  at  the  time.  There  is  a  plate  at  page  360 
professing  to  give  an  accurate  representation  of  this  Cross,  but  it  is  rarely 
that  copies  of  the  book  are  to  be  found  which  contain  this  plate.] 

Hazaet,  Corn. — Kerckelycke  Historic  van  de  Geheele  Werelt,  naeme- 
lyk  vande  voorgaende  ende  Tegenwoordige  Eeuwe,  Beschreven  door  den 
Eerw.  P.  Cornelius  Hazart,  Priester  der  Societeyt  Jesu.  4  vols,  folio, 
Antwerp,  1667. 

[Valuable  only  for  the  magnificent  portraits  it  contains  of  Parsons, 
Campion,  and  others,  and  for  its  brilliant  engravings.] 

JouvENCY. — Historiae  Societatis  Jesu  pars  quinta.  Tomus  posterior 
ab  anno  Christi  1591  ad  1616.  Auetore  Josepho  Juveneio  Societatis 
ejusdem  Sacerdote,    Eomae,  1710,  folio. 

[Jouvency  was  one  of  the  literary  giants  of  the  Society.  Professor  of 
Ehetoric  at  Paris,  he  edited  Juvenal,  Persius,  Horace,  Terence,  the 
Metamorphoses  of  Ovid,  and  many  other  works,  which  have  still 
a  certain  value.  He  was  born  in  1643,  and  died  at  Rome  in  1719.  His 
thirteenth  book  is  occupied  with  the  history  of  the  Jesuits  in  England, 
Scotland,  and  Ireland,  from  1591  to  1616.  The  most  valuable  portion 
of  this  book  is  the  Appendix,  which  gives  some  curious  incidents  in  the 
lives  of  some  Jesuits  who  *'.  .  .  post  graves  serumnas  in  Anglise  toleratas, 
pie  placideque  mortui,  ab  anno  1591  ad  1616."] 

More,  Henry. — Historia  Missionis  Anglicange  Societatis  Jesu,  ab  anno 
salutis  MDLXXx  ad  [m]  dcxix,  et  Vice  Provinciaa  primum,  tum  Provincise  ad 
eiusdem  sseculi  annum  xxxv.  Collectore  Henrico  Moro,  eiusdem 
societatis  sacerdote.     Andomari :  typis  Thomee  Gevbels,  mdclx. 

[Father  Henry  More  was  a  great-grandson  of  Sir  Thomas  More,  the 
Chancellor.  He  was  for  some  years  chaplain  to  Lord  Petre ;  was 
"Minister]"  of  the  College  at  Valladolid  in  1615;  came  to  England 
about  1620 ;  became  Provincial  in  1635,  and  continued  to  reside  in 
England  till  1649.  Of  all  the  works  which  treat  of  the  history  of 
the  labours  of  the  Jesuits  in  England  down  to  the  year  1635,  Father 
More's  is  by  far  the  most  valuable,  and  unfortunately  one  of  the 
rarest.] 

MuNoz. — Vida  y  Virtvdes  de  la  Venerable  Virgen  Dona  Luisa  de 
Carvajal  y  Mendo^a.  Su  Jornada  a  Inglaterra,  y  sucessos  en  aquel 
Reyno.  Van  al  fin  Algvnas  Poesias  espirituales  suyas,  parto  de  su 
devoeion,  y  ingenio.  Al  Rey  Nuestro  Senor  por  el  Licenciado  Luis 
Muiioz.     Con  Privilegio,  En  Madrid,  En  la  Imprenta  Real,  1632. 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  23 

[The  following  is  sometimes  bound  up  with  Munoz'  Vida,  as  in 
my  copy.] 

Copia  de  una  Carta,  Que  el  Padre  Francisco  de  Peralta  de  la 
Compania  de  Jesus,  Kector  del  Collegio  de  los  Ingleses,  de  Sevilla. 
Escriuio  al  Padre  Kodrigo  de  Cabredo,  Provincial  de  la  Nueua  Espaiia. 
En  que  se  da  quenta,  De  la  dischosa  muerte  que  tiiuo  en  Londres  la 
sancta  sehora  dona  Luysa  de  Caruajal.  Y  algunas  cosas  de  las  muchas, 
que  por  su  medio  Dios  nuestro  Senor  ohrd  En  Inglaterra,  en  nueue  anos 
que  estiiuo  en  aquel  Reyno.  Y  de  las  honras  Que  se  le  hizieron,  en 
la  yglesia  de  San  Gregorio  Magno,  Apostol  de  Inglaterra :  En  el  Collegio 
Ingles  de  Seuilla,  en  11  de  Mayo,  de  1614. 

Nichols. — A  Declaration  of  the  Kecantation  of  John  Nichols  (for  the 
space  almost  of  two  yeeres  the  Pope's  Scholar  in  the  English  Seminarie 
or  Colledge  at  Rome),  which  desireth  to  be  reconciled  and  received  as  a 
Member  into  the  true  Church  of  Christ  in  England.     London,  1581. 

[Parsons  answered  this  book  in  his  "  Discoverie  of  J.  Nichols, 
Minister,  misreported  a  Jesuite,  lately  recanted  in  the  Tower  of  London 
...  by  John  Howlett."  8vo,  Douai.  Dudley  Fenner  answered 
Parsons. 

Oliver. — Collections  towards  illustrating  the  Biography  of  the  Scotch, 
English,  and  Irish  Members,  S.  J.  Exeter,  1838. 

Parsons,  Egbert. — Elizabethas  Regina3  Anglias  Edictum  promulgatum 
Londini  29  Novemb.  Anni  mdxci  Andrece  Philopatri  ad  idem  Responsio. 
8vo.,  pp.  361. 

[Doubtful  whether  published  at  Paris  or  Rome.] 

The  Judgment  of  a  Catholic  Englishman  living  in  banishment 

for  his  religion,  showing  the  Oath  of  Allegiance  to  be  unlawful.  St. 
Omers,  4to,  1608. 

A   Conference   about   the  next  succession  of   the   Crowne  of 

England,  divided  into  two  Partes.  Published  by  R.  Doleman.  Imprinted 
at  N.,  with  License,  1594,  12mo. 

[The  object  of  the  book  was  to  support  the  title  of  the  Infanta  against 
that  of  James  I.  It  was  made  High  Treason  to  possess  a  copy  of 
this  book.     Copies  with  the  folding  genealogical  table  are  very  rare.] 

Anon.     [Attributed    to    Father     Parsons.]      De    Persecutione 

Anglicana  Commentariolus,  A  Collegio  Anglicano  Romano,  hoc  anno 
Domini  1582,  in  urbe  editus,  et  iam  denuo  Ingoldstadii  exeussus. 
Additis  Literis  S.  D.  N.  D.  Gregorii  Papas  XIII.  hortatoriis  ad  subveni- 
endum  Anglis,  &c.  Ex  officina  Weissenhorniana  apud  Wolffgangum 
Ederum,  Anno  eodem. 

[The  Roman  edition  I  have  not  seen,  but  I  believe  this  one  contains 
all  to  be  found  therein,  and  the  Papal  Letters  besides.  Another  edition 
was  published  at  Paris  the  same  year,  "  Apud  Thomam  Brumennium." 
This  tract  is  comprehended  in  Bridgewater's  Concertatio,  Part  I.] 


24  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


Ancni.    [Parsons.]     Historia  del  Glorioso  Martirio  di    Sedici 

Sacerdoti  Martirizati  in  Inghilterra  per  la  cofessione  &  difesa  della  fede 
Catolica,  I'anno  1581,  1582,  &  1583.  Con  una  prefatione  che  dichiara 
la  loro  innocenza.  Composta  da  quelli,  che  son  essi  praticauano  mentre 
erano  vivi  &  si  trouorno  presenti  al  lor  giuditio  &  morte  ...  In  Milano 

.  .  1584. 

[Another  edition  of  this  was  published  next  year,  "In  Macerata, 
Apresso  Sebastiano  Martellini,"  with  considerable  additions— e.^.,  the 
account  of  William  Hart  is  nearly  twice  as  long,  and  the  narrative 
of  George  Hadock's  execution  is  given  for  the  first  time.] 

[Parsons.]     A  Brief e  Apologie  and  Defence  of  the  Catholike 

Ecclesiastical  Hierarchic,  and  Subordination  in  England,  erected 
these  later  yeares  by  our  Holy  Father  Pope  Clement  the  Eighth :  and 
impugned  by  certaine  libels  printed  and  published  of  late  both  in  Latin 
and  English ;  by  some  unquiet  persons  under  the  name  of  Priests  of  the 
Seminaries.  Written  and  set  forthe  for  the  true  information  and  stay 
of  all  good  Catholikes,  by  Priestes  united  in  due  subordination  to  the 
Right  Reverend  Archpriest,  and  other  their  Superiors.  [1601.]  Sine 
loco  aut  anno,  12mo. 

Possoz. — Vie  du  Pere  Henri  Walpole,  mort  pour  la  Foi  en  Angleterre 
sous  Elizabeth.  Par  le  R.  P.  Alexis  Possoz  de  la  Compagnie  de  Jesus, 
Casterman,  Tournai,  1869. 

Rainoldes. — The  Somme  of  the  Conference  between  John  Rainoldes 
and  John  Hart :  touching  the  Head  and  Faith  of  the  Church.  *  *  * 
London,  1609. 

[John  Hart  has  been  the  puzzle  of  friends  and  foes  for  three  hundred 
years :  he  was  one  of  Campion's  associates ;  condemned  to  death 
in  1581,  and  pardoned  for  some  reason  shortly  after.  This  conference 
was  not  published  till  twenty-eight  years  after  it  took  place,  and  in 
the  meantime  Hart  had  returned  to  his  Jesuit  friends,  and  been  received 
apparently  without  any  suspicion.  There  is  much  about  him  in 
Simpson's  Campion.] 

RiBADENEYRA.  Historia  Ecclesiastica  del  scisma  del  Reyno  de  Ingla- 
terra  Recogida  de  diversos  y  graues  Autores,  por  el  Padre  Pedro  di 
Ribadeneyra,  de  la  Compauia  de  Jesus.     En  Emberes,  1588. 

Sanders,  Nic. — Nicolai  Sanderi  de  Origine  ac  Progressu  Schismatis 
Anglicani  Libri  tres  .  .  .  OlivsB,  1690. 

[This  edition  contains  a  Diary  kept  in  the  Tower,  from  1580  to  1585, 
by  Edmund  Rishton  the  editor,  which,  though  short  and  meagre, 
contains  some  curious  information.] 

SiMPLON. — Edmund  Campion :  a  biography  by  Richard  Simpson. 
Williams  and  Norgate,  8vo,  1867. 

[Beyond  comparison  the  most  important  contribution  which  has  yet 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  25 

appeared  to  the  knowledge  of  the  history  of  the  Jesuit  Mission  to  England 
in  1580.] 

Slingsby. — The  Lady  Falkland  :  her  Life,  from  a  MS.  in  the  Imperial 
Archives  at  Lille.  Also  a  memoir  of  Father  Francis  Slingsby,  from  MSS. 
in  the  Koyal  Library,  Brussels.     London,  Dolman,  1861. 

[This  work  was  printed  from  a  transcript  of  the  original  MS.  made  by 
Mr.  Richard  Simpson.] 

Smith,  Richaed. — Vita  piissimse  ac  Illustrissimas  Dominse  Mafjdalence 
Montis-Aucti  in  Anglia  Vice-ComitissiEe :  Scripta  per  Richardum 
Smitheum  Lincolniensem,  Saerse  Theologias  Doctorem,  qui  illi  erat  a 
sacris  confessionibus.  Ad  Edwardum  Farnesium,  S.  R.  E.  Card. 
Illustrissimum,  et  Angliae  Protectorem.     S.  loc.  et  ann.     16mo. 

[I  have  seen  it  stated  that  this  curious  and  precious  little  book  was 
printed  at  Rome.  Lady  Montagu  died  in  1608.  Her  house  was  called 
"Little  Rome"  ;  it  was  the  resort  of  priests  during  the  whole  of  Queen 
Elizabeth's  reign,  the  peers'  houses  being  still  privileged.  The  account 
given  of  the  domestic  arrangements  and  the  religious  life  in  this  house  is 
most  curious  and  almost  unique.] 

Stapleton,  Thomas. — Apologia  pro  Rege  Catholico  Phillippo  II. 
Hispanise  et  C£et :  Rege.  Contra  varias  et  falsas  accusationis  Elizabethse 
Anglise  Reginse.  Per  Edictum  suum  18  Octobris  Richemundige  datum, 
et  20  Novembris  Londini  promulgatum,  publicatas  et  excusatas  .  .  . 
Authore  Didymo  Veridico  Henfildano.  Constantisa  apud  Theodorum 
Samium.     12mo,  1592. 

[The  title,  Henfildanus,  refers  to  his  being  born  at  Henfield  in  Sussex. 
This  is  the  fiercest  and  most  powerful  attack  upon  Queen  Elizabeth 
which  was  ever  written.  Nothing  that  has  ever  appeared  from  the  pens 
of  the  Jesuits — and  Stapleton  was  not  a  Jesuit — can  be  compared  to  it 
in  eloquence,  earnestness,  and  force ;  moreover,  it  is  singularly  free  from 
the  vulgar  scurrility  which  only  too  often  characterises  such  attacks. 
Stapleton  was,  perhaps,  a  greater  less  to  the  Church  of  England  than  he 
was  a  gain  to  the  Church  of  Rome,  but  the  same  may  be  said  of  many  of 
the  exiles.] 

Tanner. — Societas  Jesu  usque  ad  Sanguinis  et  vitas  profusionem 
militans  .  .  .  Sive  Vita  et  mors  eorum  qui  ex  Societate  Jesu  in  causa 
Fidei  et  Virtutis  propugnatse,  violenta  morte  toto  orbi  sublati  sunt, 
Auctore  R.P.  Matthia  Tannero,  S.J.  .  .  .  Pragee,  1675,  folio. 

[The  book  is  remarkable  for  the  illustrations,  many  of  them  of  great 
merit,  but  ghastly  enough  to  awaken  horror  rather  than  pleasure.  Perfect 
copies  are  very  scarce,  as  it  has  been  a  practice  to  cut  out  the  plates  and 
sell  them  as  edifying  pictures  for  the  faithful.  I  have  seldom  had  the 
opportunity  of  consulting  the  original  Latin  edition,  and  have  been  com- 
pelled to  content  myself  with  a  German  translation,  published  also  at 
Prague,  in  folio,  1683  :  in  this  the  plates  are  much  worn.    This  work 


26     ONE  GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE 

must  not  be  confounded  with  another  work  (also  in  folio)  of  the  same 
author,  published  in  1694,  "  Societas  Jesu  Apostolorum  Imitatrix." 
The  plates  alone,  without  note  or  comment,  of  this  work  were  published 
in  4to,  under  the  title  "  Societas  Jesu  usque  ad  sudorem  et  mortem  pro 
salute  proximi  laborans,"  without  date,  by  the  University  of  Prague, 
probably  the  same  year  as  the  original  work.  The  copy  in  my  possession 
is  the  only  one  I  have  ever  seen.] 

Verstegan. — Theatrum  Crudelitatum  haereticorum  nostri  Temporis. 
Antver-picB,  1587,  4to. 

[Ant.  k  Wood  gives  a  long  and  curious  account  of  Verstegan  :  he  was 
for  many  years  the  chief  instrument  for  carrying  on  communication 
between  the  English  exiles  in  Belgium  and  their  friends  at  home.  The 
Fathers  of  the  London  Oratory  intend,  I  believe,  to  publish  a  collection  of 
his  letters  at  some  future  time.  In  this  work,  which  is  one  of  very 
great  rarity,  there  are  eight  plates  of  the  sufferings  of  the  Catholics 
during  Elizabeth's  reign.] 

Watson,  William. — A  Decacordon  of  Ten  Quodlibeticall  Questions 
concerning  Religion  and  State :  Wherein  the  Authour  framing  himself  a 
Quilibet  to  every  Quodlibet,  decides  an  hundred  crosse  Interrogatorie 
Doubts,  about  the  generall  Contentions  betwixt  the  Seminarie  Priests  and 
the  Jesuits  at  this  present.     Newly  imprinted  1602,  4to. 

[The  book  contains  a  great  deal  of  curious  information,  more  or  less 
true.  On  Watson's  plot  against  James  I.  (for  it  was  his)  see  Gardiner's 
History  of  England,  1603-1616,  vol.  i.  p.  81.  He  was  hung  for  High 
Treason,  December  1603.  There  is  a  long  and  curious  letter  of  his  in 
Goodman's  Court  of  King  James,  vol.  ii.  pp.  59-87.] 

A  Sparing  Discovery  of  our  English  Jesuits,  and  of  Father 

Parsons'  Proceedings  under  Pretence  of  Promoting  the  Catholic  Faith  in 
England.     4to,  1601. 

[No  place.  A  very  unsparing  attack  upon  the  Jesuits  by  one  of  the 
Secular  Priests,  who  were  opposed  to  the  influence  of  the  Society.] 

A  Dialogue  betwixt  a  Secular  Priest  and  a  Lay  Gentleman, 

Concerning  some  points  objected  by  the  Jesuiticall  faction  against  such 
Secular  Priests  as  have  showed  their  dislike  of  31.  Blackwell  and  the 
Jesuits'  proceedings.     Printed  at  Rhemes,  1601,  4to. 

Yepez. — Historia  Particular  de  la  Persecucion  de  Inglaterra,  y  de  los 
martirios  mas  insignes  que  en  ella  ha  auido,  desde  el  ano  del  Seuor, 
1570.  En  la  Qval  se  Descubren  los  efectos  lastimosos  de  la  heregia,  y  las 
mudan^as  que  suele  causar  en  las  Republicas :  con  muchas  cosas 
curiosas,  y  no  publicadas  hasta  aora,  sacados  de  Autores  graves. 
Recogida  Por  el  Padre  Fray  Diego  de  Yepes,  de  la  Orden  de  S.  Geronimo, 
Confessor  del  Rey  don  Felipe  IL  de  gloriosa  memoria,  Obispo  de 
Tara^ona.  Dirigida  Al  rey  don  Felipe  III.  Nuestro  Senor.  En 
Madrid,  Por  Luis  Sanchez  Aiio  mdxcix.  4to. 


ONE  GENERATION  OF  A 
NORFOLK  HOUSE 


INTRODUCTOEY 

On  the  17th  of  November,  1558,  as  the  first  grey  dawn 
was  gaining  upon  the  darkness  of  the  night,  Mary  Tudor, 
Queen  of  England,  ceased  to  breathe.  Two  days  later 
Reginald  Pole,  Cardinal  and  Legate  of  the  Holy  See, 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  the  last  Englishman  who  is 
known  to  have  been  a  candidate  for  the  Papacy,  died  at  his 
palace  at  Lambeth :  Sovereign  and  Primate  receiving  the 
last  rites  of  the  Church  according  to  the  ritual  of  the  See  of 
Rome.  And  thus — as  Mr.  Froude  puts  the  matter — "  the 
reign  of  the  Pope  in  England  and  the  reign  of  terror  closed 
together." 

"  The  reign  of  the  Pope  in  England  "  certainly  did  close 
then,  and  closed  for  ever.  Whether  ''the  reign  of  terror  " 
ended  is  another  question,  the  answer  to  which  is  not  to  be 
given  hastily.  Among  those  best  qualified  to  decide,  some 
put  that  question  from  them  as  one  too  much  surrounded 
with  shameful  associations  to  admit  of  being  answered 
pleasantly,  and  some  reply  to  it  with  indignant  and 
passionate  denial. 

We  are  apt  to  say  that  in  our  days  events  follow  one 
another  with  unexampled  rapidity.  We  affirm,  not  without 
a  touch  of  self-complacency,  that  "  we  live  fast."  Fifty 
years  have  seen  the  passing  of  the  Reform  Bill,  the 
Emancipation  of  the  Slaves,  the  Repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws, 
the  Disestablishment  of  the  Irish  Church,  and  the  annulling 
of  a  host  of  statutes  that  were  a  reproach  upon  our  legis- 
lation.    But  it  may  be  doubted  whether  any  twenty  years 

27 


28  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

since  the  Peace  of  Amiens — fruitful  as  they  may  have 
been  in  measures  exercising  a  profound  influence  upon  our 
daily  lives  and  habits  of  thought — can  be  compared,  in  the 
tremendous  consequences  they  involved,  with  the  twenty 
years  which  closed  with  the  death  of  Queen  Mary. 

By  a  single  act  of  the  Legislature — we  may  almost  say 
by  a  single  sweep  of  the  King's  pen — at  least  a  twentieth 
part  of  the  best  land  in  England  had  been  made  to  change 
hands.  ^  Upwards  of  six  hundred  religious  houses  in 
England  and  Wales  alone  were  given  over  to  pillage ;  ^  the 
dwellers  in  precincts  once  held  sacred,  counting,  it  must  be 
remembered,  by  thousands,  were  turned  adrift  to  live  as 
they  could,  scantily  pensioned,  and  sometimes  exposed  to 
actual  penury  and  want.  3  Hundreds  of  men,  gentlemen 
by  birth  and  education,  4  with  the  student's  tastes  and  the 
student's  retiring  habits,  whose  lives  had  been  spent  in 
harmless,  if  unprofitable,  seclusion — not  seldom,  too,  spent 
in  acts  of  piety  and  devotion — found  themselves  cast  out, 
homeless  and  strange,  to  become  suddenly  the  scorn  and 
derision  of  the  fickle  mob  or  the  coarse  and  brutal  fanatics 
who  were  now  let  loose  upon  them. 

The  vulgar  time-servers  of  the  monasteries,  the  men 
whose  god  was  their  belly,  easily  accommodated  themselves 
to  the  change  ;  they  were  soon  absorbed  in  the  multitude 
with  whom  their  sympathies  lay,  and,  being  of  the  earth 
earthy,  had  lost  but  little,  perhaps  had  gained  something  on 
the  whole.  But  it  was  precisely  the  best  and  most  devout, 
the  purest  and  gentlest  spirits,  upon  whom  the  full  force  of 
the  blow  fell.  The  hypocrites  could  take  care  of  them- 
selves ;  the  religious  and  conscientious  men  were  the  real 
sufferers.  These,  clinging  still  to  their  monastic  dress  (for 
they  held  themselves  still  bound  by  their  vows),  were 
assailed  by  jeers  and  insults  wherever  they  appeared  ;5  in 
the  streets  they  were  hooted  at  and  stoned,  the  ribald 
clamour  growing  to  such  a  height  that  at  last  a  special 
proclamation  was  issued  to  restrain  the  violence  of  the 
disorderly.  Meanwhile  the  vast  estates  so  rudely  con- 
fiscated were  tossed  about  almost  at  random.     Upstarts, 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  29 

enriched  by  spoils  that  surpassed  their  wildest  dreams, 
played  the  part  of  gamblers :  the  chances  of  the  cards  had 
brought  them  wealth,  but  not  the  power  to  use  it  wisely. 
Sometimes  a  creature  of  the  Court  would  get  a  grant  of 
lands  which  he  had  neither  the  means  to  cultivate  nor 
even  the  funds  to  pay  for  the  expense  of  entering  upon. 
The  market  was  glutted  with  estates  that  were  to  be  had 
for  a  song.  But  while  the  lawyers  throve  and  made 
colossal  fortunes,  the  recklessness  of  the  gambling-table 
clung  to  the  adventurers  who  seemed  to  be  clutching  their 
gains.  What  came  lightly  went  as  lightly.  Hungry  Italians 
or  notorious  profligates  grasped  manor  after  manor  only  to 
let  them  slip :  the  booty  seemed  to  the  vultures  about  the 
Court  inexhaustible,  yet  it  came  to  an  end.  ^ 

In  1536  the  smaller  monasteries  were  suppressed ;  in 
1539  the  larger  ones  shared  the  same  fate ;  nine  years 
later  followed  the  dissolution  of  the  chantries,  collegiate 
churches,  and  hospitals,  to  the  number  of  nearly  three 
thousand  more ;  ^  and  two  years  later,  as  though  this  were 
not  enough,  the  churches  were  stripped  of  their  vestments, 
chalices,  ornaments,  and  bells,  and  the  very  college  libraries 
plundered  of  the  jewelled  binding  of  their  books,  if  any  such 
remained  for  the  spoiler. 

Henry  VIII.  died  in  January  1547,  King  Edward  in 
July  1553.  The  utter  break-up  of  the  ancient  ecclesiastical 
institutions  of  the  kingdom  had  taken  barely  seventeen 
years.  The  overwhelming  character  of  the  revolution  is 
even  now  diJQ&cult  to  realise,  impossible  adequately  to 
describe ;  the  shock  which  the  moral  sentiment  of  the 
nation  experienced  has  never  yet  been  duly  appreciated :  its 
effect  upon  the  religious  tone  and  habits  of  the  people  can 
hardly  be  exaggerated.  The  ordinary  restraints  of  religion 
had  been  suddenly  and  violently  torn  away ;  the  clerical 
police  was  disarmed ;  the  pulpits  silent ;  the  universities 
menaced,  and  warned  that  their  time  was  coming  next ; 
learning  and  literature  were  smitten  as  with  palsy ;  thought- 
ful men  looked  out  upon  the  future  with  dismay,  almost 
with  despair.  ^     Such  was  the  state  of  affairs  in  England 


30  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

when  Queen  Mary  ascended  the  throne.  Less  than  a 
month  before,  she  had  been  declared  illegitimate  and 
incapable  of  succeeding  to  the  crown  by  letters  patent,  the 
draught  of  which  her  brother  had  prepared  with  his  own 
hand.*  At  the  moment  when  Edw^ard  breathed  his  last, 
her  life  was  believed  to  be  in  imminent  peril;  and  no 
sooner  did  the  tidings  of  his  decease  reach  her  at  Hunsdon, 
in  Herts,  than  she  fled  as  fast  as  relays  of  horses  could 
carry  her,  and  rode  night  and  day  without  halt  for  a 
hundred  miles,  to  Kenninghall,  twenty  miles  from  Norwich, 
a  castle  of  the  Howards.!  Three  weeks  more  and  she  is 
riding  into  London  as  Queen ;  her  sister  Elizabeth,  escorted 
by  two  thousand  horse  and  a  retinue  of  ladies,  waiting  to 
receive  her  outside  the  gates. |  Three  days  after  Mass  was 
sung  by  Gardiner,  Bishop  of  Winchester,  in  the  chapel  of 
the  Tower ;  and  in  another  month,  to  the  joy  of  three- 
fourths  of  the  people,  the  Catholic  ritual  was  generally 
restored  throughout  the  land. 

Kecklessly  as  the  confiscated  property  of  the  monasteries 
had  been  flung  about,  some  still  remained  undistributed. 
In  the  third  year  of  her  reign  Mary  determined  to  make 
such  restitution  as;  was  still  possible.  In  October  1555  a 
Bill  was  laid  before  Parliament  to  authorise  the  surrender 
of  all  the  abbey  lands  remaining  in  the  possession  of  the 
Crown.  All  rectories,  impropriations,  and  ecclesiastical 
possessions  were  resigned,  the  total  annual  revenue, 
amounting  to  not  less  than  £60,000,  being  set  apart  for  the 

*  Froude,  v.  p.  500  et  seq.  There  are  some  important  letters,  etc.,  on 
this  chapter  in  our  history  among  the  Losely  MSS. ,  which  have  not  yet 
been  printed.     See  Hist.  MSS.  Commission,  7th  Report,  p.  609. 

t  Ibid.  vi.  82  and  310. 

J  "...  .  queen  Marie's  grace  came  to  London  the  3  daye  of  August, 
beinge  broughte  in  with  her  nobles  very  honorably  &  strongly.  The 
nomber  of  velvet  coats  that  did  ride  before  hir,  as  well  strangeres  as  otheres, 
was  740,  and  the  nomber  of  ladyes  and  gentlemen  that  followede  was 
180.  The  Earle  of  Arundell  did  ride  next  before  hir  bearinge  the  sworde 
in  his  hande,  and  Sir  Anthony  Browne  did  beare  up  hir  trayne.  The 
ladye  Elizabethe  did  followe  hir  next,  and  after  hir  the  Lord  marques  of 
Exeter's  wyfe.'' — The  Chronicles  of  Queen  Jane  (Camden  Society,  1850), 
p.  14. 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  31 

augmentation  of  small  livings,  the  maintenance  of  preachers, 
and  the  providing  exhibitions  for  poor  scholars  at 
the  two  Universities  .9  By  the  same  Act  the  Statute  of 
Mortmain  v^as  suspended  for  twenty-one  years,  that  all 
who  were  so  inclined  might  have  the  opportunity  of  making 
some  amends  for  the  wholesale  spoliation  that  had  been 
carried  on.  Nor  was  this  all :  a  beginning  was  actually 
made  in  the  direction  of  restoring  the  monastic  bodies. 
Once  again  an  abbot  of  Westminster  ruled  in  the  venerable 
cloister  over  a  score  or  so  of  Benedictine  monks  collected 
under  his  crozier ;  once  again  Dominican  friars  were  settled 
at  Smithfield,  and  Observant  friars  at  Greenwich;  and 
nuns  of  the  order  of  St.  Bridget  were  summoned  to  take 
possession  of  their  old  home  at  Sion.^° 

The  legislation  of  the  past  few  years  had  been  so 
violent  and  so  sweeping  that  only  the  most  passionate  and 
thoroughgoing  reformers  could  keep  pace  with  it.  With 
the  accession  of  Mary  a  reaction  set  in  the  force  of  which 
none  could  estimate.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  bulk 
of  the  nation  witnessed  the  return  of  the  old  ritual  with 
unmixed  thankfulness  and  joy."  What  course  events 
might  have  taken  but  for  that  miserable  Spanish  marriage 
it  is  idle  now  to  speculate  upon  ;  it  is  certain  that  as  yet 
the  doctrines  of  the  Eeformers  had  made  very  little  im- 
pression indeed  upon  the  religious  convictions  of  the  people 
of  England.  Very  soon  a  cry  of  discontent  and  bitter 
hostility  was  raised.  From  over  the  sea,  in  the  refuge  at 
Geneva,  book  after  book  came  forth  filled  with  furious 
denunciations  of  the  new  Queen.  John  Knox,  Goodman, 
Becon,  Ponet,  Traheron,  and  many  another  whose  name 
has  gone  down  into  silence,  shrieked  at  her  in  language 
which  for  coarseness  and  scurrility  stands  unparalleled  in 
literature.     She  was  a  bastard  ;*  she  was  a  woman,  and  so 

*  Even  Ridley  had  not  scrupled  to  proclaim  this  at  Paul's  Cross. 
*'....  the  nexte  Sonday  after  .[July  1553]  prechyd  the  Bysshoppe  of 
London,  Nicholas  Reddeele,  and  there  callyd  bothe  the  sayde  ladys 
[Mary  and  Elizabeth]  bastarddes,  that  alle  the  pepull  were  sore 
anoyd  with  his  worddes,  so  uncherytabulle  spokyne  by  hym  in  so  opyne 
ane  awdiens." — Chronicle  of  the  Grey  Friars,  p.  78. 


32  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

unfit  to  reign ;  she  was  Jezebel ;  she  was  Athahah  ;  she 
was  "  this  ungodUe  serpent  Marie,  the  chief  instrument 
of  all  this  present  miserie  in  England."  Volume  and 
pamphlet  and  broadsheet  came  pouring  forth  in  a  never- 
ceasing  stream.  Every  resource  of  furious  rhetoric  was 
exhausted,  the  polemics  goading  one  another  on  to  the 
wildest  frenzy  of  hatred  and  disappointed  rage.  ^^^  Safe  in 
their  Swiss  asylum,  they  had  nothing  to  fear  for  themselves, 
nothing  to  lose  and  everything  to  gain  by  fomenting  dis- 
content and  sedition  at  home. 

Irritated  by  the  hornets'  nest  which  she  could  not  reach, 
and  perplexed  in  the  maze  of  questions  which  she  could  not 
solve ;  her  life  one  long  dreary  disappointment ;  in  her 
childhood  sickly  and  ailing  ;  in  her  girlhood  a  forlorn  and 
anxious  recluse ;  in  her  womanhood  a  neglected  and  forsaken 
wife,  the  unhappy  Queen  sought  for  comfort,  vainly,  in 
the  dark  and  morose  fanaticism  of  her  French  and  Spanish 
directors,  and  the  stern  persecution  took  its  course  which 
slander  and  malice  and  vituperation  had  done  much  to 
provoke,  and  which  her  own  religious  melancholy  aggravated. 

Over  that  deplorable  chapter  in  Queen  Mary's  history  the 
most  faithful  apologists  of  the  Church  of  Kome  must  needs 
be  content  to  cast  a  veil."^'  And  God  forbid  that  any 
Christian  man  should  seek  to  excuse  or  palliate  the 
enormities  of  that  terrible  time,  or  should  look  back  upon 
them  with  any  other  feeling  than  horror.  Neverthe- 
less, this  fact  has  been  passed  over  quite  too  lightly  by 
Protestant  writers — viz.,  that  religious  persecution  was  no 
novelty  on  the  one  side  or  the  other,  that  the  Beformers' 
hands  were  deeply  stained  in  the  blood  of  the  Anabaptists, 
and  that  a  restless  and  malignant  band  of  malcontents,  from 
their  hiding-places  beyond  the  seas,  were  from  the  very 
first  stirring  heaven  and  earth  to  make  the  Queen's  crown 
a  crown  of  thorns  upon  her  brow.     This  uncompromising 

*  "  The  foulest  blot  on  the  character  of  this  queen  is  her  Ipng  and 
cruel  persecution  of  the  Keformers.  The  sufferings  of  the  victims 
naturally  begot  an  antipathy  to  the  woman  by  whose  authority  they 
were  inflicted." — Lingard,  v.  259. 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  33 

faction,  whose  one  and  only  bond  of  union  was  their  com- 
munity in  hatred  of  their  sovereign,  stood  to  her  precisely 
in  the  same  attitude  as  that  adopted  subsequently  by  the 
Seminarists  to  her  successor.  They  differed  only  in  this, 
that  the  Protestants  had  no  discipline,  no  great  unity  of 
principle,  no  grand  unselfish  aim.  As  a  rule  they  were 
eminently  plebeian ;  socially  they  belonged  to  a  rank 
several  grades  lower  than  that  of  the  men  who  in  the  next 
generation  filled  the  Colleges  of  Rheims,  Valladolid,  and 
Douay :  '3  but  in  their  restless  activity  in  plotting  and 
slandering  they  were  more  than  a  match  for  their  Romish 
successors ;  and  whatever  excuse  may  be  found  for  the  per- 
secution of  Elizabeth  in  the  fierce  attacks  o£  Parsons  and  his 
fellows,  is  fairly  to  be  allowed  for  the  atrocities  of  Mary's 
reign  in  the  abominable  scurrilities  of  Becon  and  Knox. 

Meanwhile,  in  these  years  which  intervened  between  the 
suppression  of  the  monasteries  and  the  accession  of  Mary, 
the  condition  of  affairs  in  the  Church  of  England  was 
beyond  measure  deplorable.  Parsonages  were  bestowed 
upon  grooms  and  menials,  a  share  of  the  income  being 
reserved  for  the  patron  of  the  benefice ;  the  curates  were 
the  scorn  of  their  parishioners,  and  the  "rude  lobs  of  the 
country  "  jeered  at  the  illiterate  "  lack-Latins  who  slubbered 
up  their  services,  and  could  not  read  the  humbles. "^4 

In  the  country  parishes  the  eye  was  greeted  at  every 
turn  by  gaunt  stone  walls  crumbling  to  ruin,  sumptuous 
buildings  untenanted,  shrines  ihat  were  once  the  treasure- 
houses  of  a  district  and  the  resort  of  thousands  of  pilgrims 
who,  in  their  journeyings,  had  circulated  countless  sums 
of  money  among  the  inhabitants  of  the  district,^5  stripped 
bare  and  plundered  to  the  very  lead  upon  their  roofs  or 
the  brasses  in  their  pavements.  A  chill  horror  had  begun 
to  haunt  the  ruined  cloisters,  and  shudderings  of  a  super- 
stitious fear,  lest  the  curse  should  light  upon  such  as 
even    slept   upon   the   desecrated  ground.'^     Men  saw,   or 


.  those  that  enjoyed  them  did  not  inhabit  or  build  upon  the 
lands,  but  forsook  them  for  many  years,  till  [in]  the  time  of  Queen 
Elizabeth  a  great  plague  happening,  the  poor  people  betook  themselves 

3 


34  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

fancied  they  saw,  with  perplexity  and  amazement  that 
the  spoilers  who  had  seized  the  bulk  of  the  plunder  were 
none  the  richer  for  their  booty.*  The  old  resident  county 
families  were  not  they  whose  broad  acres  were  increased 
by  any  share  of  the  abbey  lands ;  t  to  them  the  spolia- 
tion was  almost  an  unmixed  loss.  The  prior  or  abbot  of 
some  neighbouring  monastery  might  be  wanting  in  that 
fervent  devotion  which  the  monk  was  theoretically  sup- 
posed to  exhibit,  but  he  was  at  any  rate  socially  the 
country  squire's  equal,  often  a  man  of  education  and  taste, 
sometimes  too  a  cadet  of  a  ''  knightly  family,"  and  even  if 
addicted  to  hunting  and  hawking  (not  to  mention  more 
reprehensible  and  immoral  pursuits),  yet  in  the  main  a 
genial  companion  whose  society  and  hospitality  made  him 
an  accession  in  provincial  circles,  while  his  undeniable 
open-handedness  to  the  poor  materially  lightened  the 
burdens  which  would  otherwise  have  pressed  heavily  upon 
the  landlord  class.  It  was  all  very  well  for  the  great  nobles 
about  the  court  to  go  on  their  way  as  if  the  dissolution 
had  never  taken  place — they  saw  little  or  nothing  of  the 
actual  working  of  the  mighty  change;  but  in  remote  dis- 
tricts, in  villages  far  away  from  the  towns — villages  to 
which  the  abbey  loas  the  town,  the  gentry  were  brought 
face  to  face  with  the  tremendous  magnitude  of  the  social 
revolution  that  had  been  effected;  and  as,  in  their  case, 
there  had  been  no  change  of  religious  conviction,  the 
discontent  among  them  was  sullen,  deep-rooted,  and  all 
but  universal. 

into  the  remainder  of  the  houses,  and  finding  many  good  rooms,  began 
to  settle  there,  till  at  length  they  were  put  out  by  them  to  whom  the 
grants  of  the  leases  and  lands  were  made,"— Spelman,  p.  239,  ed.  1853. 

*  Most  striking  is  the  parallel  in  the  case  of  those  who  had  gorged 
the  plunder  levied  by  Nero  upon  the  old  landed  gentry  of  Italy,  when 
Galba  attempted  to  get  back  the  larger  portion  of  their  booty.  Tacitus 
says:  "...  At  illis  vix  decimae  super  portiones  erant,  isdem  erga  aliena 
sumptibus  quibus  sua  prodegerant,  cum  rapacissimo  cuique  ac  perdi- 
tissimo  non  agri  aut  fcenus  sed  sola  instrumenta  vitiorura  raanerent." — 
Tac.  Hut.  i.  c.  20. 

t  This  is  abundantly  clear  by  Spelman's  lists,  &c, 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  35 


In  the  dark  chimney  corner  during  the  long  dull  winter 
evenings,  while  the  Christmas  logs  were  sending  up  their 
lazy  smoke,  as  his  children  gathered  round  him  and  stared 
at  the  fire,  many  an  old  squire,  still  but  a  little  past  his 
prime,  would  tell  of  this  or  that  prior  or  monk  who 
used  to  drop  in  in  the  old  days  and  bring  some  relief  to 
the  monotony  of  their  isolated  lives ;  he  would  not  seldom 
mutter  his  curse  upon  the  ribald  recklessness  of  the 
parvenus  who  had  ousted  their  betters  and  made  the 
grand  old  places  desolate.  Sometimes,  too,  he  would  sigh 
for  a  priest  of  the  old  school,  into  whose  practised  ear 
he  might  pour  out  his  soul  and  seek  remission  of  sins  that 
pressed  sorely  upon  his  burdened  conscience.  How  bitterly 
he  would  mourn  for  "the  good  old  times,"  and  denounce 
the  wild  havoc  that  had  been  wrought !  Generous  lads 
heard  the  laments  and  brooded  over  them  :  they  got  to 
believe  that  their  parents'  lives  had  been  saddened  and 
their  own  estates  seriously  damaged  by  that  which  they 
had  been  taught  from  childhood  to  regard  as  sacrilege, 
and  the  rising  generation  were  in  the  mood  to  hope  for 
little  in  the  future  and  to  regret  very  much  in  the  past. 
About  that  past,  already  becoming  well-nigh  heroic,  there 
clung  a  certain  romance  and  mystery  which,  to  the 
enthusiasm  of  youth,  it  seemed  supremely  desirable  to 
revive. 

There  was  yet  another  reason  why  the  country  gentry 
should  feel  soreness  and  irritation  at  the  new  order  of 
things.  "When  all  has  been  said  that  can  be  said  to  the 
discredit  of  the  "  Eegulars,"  it  should  never  be  forgotten 
that  the  whole  machinery  of  education  had  for  centuries 
been  in  their  hands. ^^  That  education  may  have  been  as 
meagre  and  unsatisfactory  as  the  exaggerations  of  Erasmus 
and  Reuchlin  strove  to  exhibit  it,  but  such  as  it  was  it 
was  the  only  education  offered.  The  dissolution  of  the 
monasteries  meant  the  shutting  up  all  the  great  schools 
in  the  kingdom,  and  leaving  fathers  of  families  to  create 
their  own  supply  under  the  pressure  of  the  sudden  demand. 
The  country  gentry  saw  with  dismay  that  the  old  seminaries 


36  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

had  been  swept  away.  It  was  no  longer  possible  to  send  a 
daughter  to  a  neighbouring  convent  school  or  a  son  to  the 
nearest  abbey.  The  country  clergy  were  as  ignorant  as 
the  mechanics  from  whom,  in  a  vast  number  of  cases,  they 
had  sprung;  and  though  here  and  there  some  monk  or 
friar  would  be  driven  to  earn  his  bread  by  taking  service 
in  the  layman's  family  as  private  tutor  ^7  (and  there  were 
many  instances  of  this),  yet  the  supply  of  these  men  fell 
off  every  year,  and  in  the  after  times  the  arrangement 
exposed  the  household  to  serious  pains  and  penalties  if  any 
suspicion  attached  to  the  too  conscientious  retainer. 

Mary's  accession  to  the  crown  was  to  the  '*  Country 
party  "  a  promise  of  return  to  the  better  way.  The  abbey 
lands  were  gone — gone  irrecoverably  (even  the  Pope  and 
his  legate  were  compelled  to  confess  so  much),  but  new 
endowments  might  be  forthcoming,  and  in  numberless 
instances  a  comparatively  small  outlay  would  suffice  to 
restore  the  buildings  that  as  yet  had  scarcely  had  time  to 
fall  into  decay.  There  seemed  some  probability,  there  cer- 
tainly was  a  hope,  that  a  revival  would  sooner  or  later 
set  in.  x\t  any  rate  the  beaten  side  could  not  bring  itself 
to  acquiesce  in  defeat,  and  the  "logic  of  facts"  was  lost 
upon  it.  As  yet  men  had  not  learned  to  recognise  in  the 
force  of  the  mighty  current  which  had  swept  away  the 
abbeys  an  outcome  from  that  perennial  source  of  discord, 
the  antagonism  between  town  and  country, — the  one, 
greedy  for  change  which  might  bring  incalculable  profit; 
the  other,  clinging  to  the  past  lest  it  should  lose  all  that 
was  worth  having. 

Just  when  the  country  gentry  began  to  be  sanguine, 
Mary  died;  and  before  a  year  had  passed  their  dreams 
of  a  restoration  of  the  "old  order"  were  rudely  dispelled. 
How  the  bitter  disappointment  told  upon  them  ;  how  the 
irritation  of  blighted  hopes  drove  them  to  passionate  out- 
bursts of  rage  and  abortive  attempts  at  rebellion  ;  how 
the  new  Queen,  with  that  mighty  oligarchy,  her  council, 
tightened  the  curb,  and  plunged  in  the  rowels,  and  laid 
on  the  lash  with  a  heavier  hand  the  more  restive  and 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  37 

furious  the  team  became  that  she  was  breaking  to  sub- 
mission ;  how  the  townsmen  beat  the  countrymen,  and 
the  traders  the  squirearchy,  and  the  new  men  were  too 
strong  for  the  old  houses, — will  be  illustrated,  I  trust, 
by  the  narrative  in  the  following  pages. 


NOTES  TO  INTRODUCTOEY 

1.  Page  28.  There  are  few  questions  more  difficult  to  decide  than  the 
amount  of  landed  property  in  the  hands  of  the  monasteries  at  the  time 
of  the  dissolution.  The  estimates  given  by  various  writers  differ  as  widely 
as  guesses  usually  do  when  they  are  made  without  sufficient  knowledge 
and  suggested  by  violent  prejudice.  The  estimate  adopted  in  the  text  is 
that  of  Hume,  who  certainly  had  no  predilections  in  favour  of  the  monks  : 
he  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  aggregate  of  all  the  ecclesiastical 
property  in  the  kingdom  at  the  date  of  the  suppression  yielded  one-tenth  of 
the  national  rental,  and  that  this  was  about  equally  divided  between  the 
"  secular  "  clergy  and  the  "regulars."  The  subject  has  been  very  ably 
discussed  by  a  writer  in  the  Home  and  Foreign  Review  for  January,  1864. 
He  shows  conclusively  (1)  that  so  far  from  monastic  bodies  having 
increased  in  wealth  during  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries,  they 
had  certainly  declined ;  (2)  that  the  sequestration  and  suppression  of 
monasteries  had  been  always  going  on  to  a  far  greater  extent  than 
is  commonly  believed.  No  less  than  146  Alien  Priories  were  appro- 
priated by  Henry  V. ;  29  of  the  lesser  monasteries  were  granted 
to  Cardinal  Wolsey  alone,  and  more  than  half  of  the  monastic  foun- 
dations which  had  at  some  time  or  other  been  endowed  in  Hampshire 
had  disappeared  before  1536.  In  Scotland,  where  might  was  always 
stronger  than  right,  the  monasteries  appear  to  have  been  despoiled 
according  to  the  caprice  of  the  reigning  sovereign,  and  their  estates 
dealt  with  in  a  peculiarly  arbitrary  manner. — (See  Historical  MSS. 
Commission,  5th  Keport,  pp.  647,  648.)  As  to  the  fiction  in  Sprot's 
Chronicle,  that  William  the  Conqueror  divided  England  into  60,000 
knights'  fees,  and  that  the  clergy  held  28,000,  and  that  there  were  then 
45,000  churches  in  the  country,  it  has  been  rightly  described  as  "  a 
mythical  estimate  which  ought  never  to  have  been  accepted  by  his- 
torians." 

See  the  preface  to  Tanner's  Notitia  by  Nasmith  ;  Taylor's  Index 
Monasticus,  Introduction;  Lingard,  History  of  England,  vi.,  note  E.  ; 
Collier,  Ecclesiastical  History,  B.  7,  c.  xv.  p.  650.  There  is  a  very 
suggestive  table  in  Appendix  A,  p.  138,  of  Bishop  Short's  Church  History, 
giving  the  number  of  religious  houses  founded  in  each  reign  since  the 
Conquest. 

2.  Page  28.  Take  the  following  as  one  indication  among  a  thousand 
of  the  wholesale  character  of  the  spoliation: — "England  had  been 
largely  replenished  with  bell  metal,  since  the  dissolution  of  the  monas- 
teries ;  and  vast  quantities  of  it  were  shipped  off  for  gain.  Nor  was  the 
land  yet  (1547)  emptied  of  it,  for  now  it  was  thought  fit  to  restrain 
the  carriage  of  it  abroad  ;  especially  having  so  near  an  enemy  as 
France,  that  might  make  use  of  it  for  guns  against  ourselves.    Therefore, 

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40  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


July  27th,  a  proclamation  was  issued  out,  forbidding  the  exportation  of 
that  and  other  provisions,  lest  the  enemy  might  be  supplied,  and  our  own 
country  and  army  want." — Strype's  MeDiorials,  Edw.  VI.,  B.  I.  c.  vi. 
845.  For  the  spoils  in  the  shape  of  jewels  and  plate,  removed  from 
Walsingham,  see  Heylin's  Hist.  Reform,  fo.  10. 

3.  Page  28.  "  But  those  that  were  appointed  to  pay  these  poor 
men,  were  suspected  to  deal  hardly  with  them  by  making  delays,  or 
receiving  bribes  and  deductions  out  of  the  pensions,  or  fees  for  writing 
receipts  ;  as  it  appeared  afterwards  they  did,  which  occasioned  an  Act 
of  Parliament  in  behalf  of  these  pensioners." — Strype's  Memorials ,  Edw. 
VI.,  B.  I.   c.  XV.  fo.  118. 

4.  Page  28.  "The  ignorance  of  the  Monks"  has,  until  very  lately, 
been  taken  for  granted  by  all  popular  writers  ;  and  yet  that,  as  a  body, 
they  were  less  learned  than  the  secular  clergy  appears  on  examination  to 
be  almost  infinitely  improbable  :  the  very  contrary  might  be  proved  to 
demonstration  if  it  were  worth  while.  During  the  last  ten  years  of 
Henry  VIII. 's  reign  the  king  appointed  to  twenty- eight  bishoprics  in 
England  and  Wales.  In  no  less  than  seventeen  cases  were  the  vacancies 
supplied  by  ecclesiastics  who  had  been  superiors  or  members  of 
monastic  bodies.  The  list  of  these  men  {see  previous  page)  is  suggestive, 
and,  as  far  as  I  know,  has  not  been  given  elsewhere. 

Of  these  I  have  collected  the  following  notices  : — 

Baklow.  *'  .  .  .  When  he  was  Bishop  of  St.  David's,  laboured  for  the 
disposing  of  Aberguilly  College  to  Brecknock,  whereby  provision  being 
made  for  learning  and  knowledge  in  the  Scriptures,  the  Welsh  rude- 
ness might  have  been  formed  into  English  civility.  ...  he  wrote 
several  books  against  Popery.  .  .  ." — Strype's  Memorials,  Edward  VI., 
B.  II.  c.  xxvi.  Concerning  his  learning  and  writings,  see  Wood,  Ath. 
Ox.  i.  365;  see  too  Heylin's  Hist.  Reform,  p.  54. 

Bird,  "...  Educated  in  theologicals  in  the  house  or  college  of  the 
Carmelites  (he  being  one  of  that  order)  in  the  University  of  Oxon, 
where  making  considerable  proficiency  in  his  studies  ...  he  wrote  and 
published  Lectures  on  St.  Paul,  &c.,  &c." — Wood,  Ath.  Ox.  i.  288:  see 
too  Strype's  Granmer^  B.  I.  c.  xvi.  §  61. 

BusHE  was  "well  skilled  in  physic  as  well  as  divinity,  and  wrote 
learned  books."  Wood  says  "he  was  numbered  among  the  celebrated 
poets  of  the  university,"  and  that  he  was  "noted  in  his  time  for 
his  great  learning  in  divinity  and  physic." — Ath.  Ox.  i.  269.  [He 
was  deprived  under  Queen  Mary.] 

Chambers  graduated  both  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge.  He  has  been 
credited  with  the  revision  of  the  Book  of  Kevelations  in  the  Bishops' 
Bible,  but  there  is  some  doubt  whether  truly  or  not.     In  either  case  the 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  41 

story  proves  the  estimation  in  which  he  was  held  by  his  contemporaries. 
— Cooper,  Ath.  Cant.  i.  142. 

HiLSEY  "  being  much  addicted  from  his  childhood  to  learning  and 
religion,  nothing  was  wanting  in  his  sufficient  parents  to  advance  them." 
— Ath.  Ox.  i.  113,  where  an  account  of  him  and  his  writings  may  be 
found. 

HoLBECH  was  '•  a  true  favourer  of  the  Gospel,  and  made  much  use  of 
in  the  reforming  and  settling  of  the  Church." 

King.  "  While  he  was  young,  being  much  addicted  to  religion  and 
learning,  was  made  a  Cistercian  monk  ....  In  Queen  Mary's  reign 
....  he  did  not  care  to  have  anything  to  do  with  such  that  were  then 
called  heretics,  and  therefore  he  is  commended  by  posterity  for  his  mild- 
ness."— Ath.    Ox.  ii.  775. 

KiTCHiN  was  the  one  single  Bishop  in  the  kingdom  who  consented  to 
take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  to  assist  at  her 
coronation. 

Perhaps  the  most  memorable  instance  of  a  monk  becoming  a 
protestant  martyr  is  that  of  Bishop  Hooper.  Who  that  reads  Foxe's 
account  of  him  {Acts  and  Mon.  vol.  vi.  p.  636  et  seq.)  would  suspect 
that  Hooper  was  for  some  years  a  Cistercian  monk  at  Gloucester  ? — 
Strype,  u.s.  ;   Stow's  Survey,  1633,  p.  533. 

5.  Page  28.    Tierney's  Dodd,  Pt.  I.  art.  iv. 

6.  Page  29.  Spelman,  History  and  Fate  of  Sacrilege,  ch.  vi.  The 
chapter  is  entitled  "  The  particulars  of  divers  Monasteries  in  Norfolk, 
whereby  the  late  owners  since  the  Dissolution,  are  extinct  or  decayed  or 
overthrown  by  misfortunes  and  grievous  accidents."  Sir  Henry  Spelman 
began  to  write  his  book  in  the  year  1612. 

7.  Page  29.  Henry  VHI.  has  sins  enough  to  answer  for ;  but 
if  the  pillage  of  "  the  Terror,"  as  Mr,  Green  justly  calls  this  period  of  our 
history,  had  not  been  followed  by  the  far  more  sweeping  robberies  of  the 
following  reign,  it  is  conceivable  that  no  very  great  harm  would 
have  been  done,  for  sooner  or  later  something  lilce  a  dissolution  of 
the  Monasteries  was  inevitable  ;  but  the  spoliation  of  the  Hospitals  was 
an  almost  unmixed  evil,  and  the  wholesale  destruction  of  the  Colleges, 
Chantries,  and  Free  Chapels  was  vehemently  opposed  by  Cranmer  in  the 
House  of  Lords.  The  Hospitals,  Chantries,  and  Free  Chapels  had 
been  given  to  the  king  by  a  statute  passed  in  the  27th  of  Henry 
VIH.  c.  4,  but  this  had  never  been  put  in  force,  possibly  through 
Cranmer's  intercession.  In  the  1st  of  Edward  VI.  c.  14  they  were 
again  condemned.  By  this  act  no  fewer  than  110  Hospitals,  90 
Colleges,  and  2,374  Free  Chapels  "were  thus  conferred  upon  the  king 
by  name,  but  not  intended   to  be  kept  together  for   his   benefit   only." 


42  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


— (Heylin.)     The  "Free  Chapels"    in  many  cases    appear    to    have 
approximated  to  what  are  now  Nonconformist  places  of  ivorship ;  they 
were   "free"    in  the    sense   that   they    were    exempt   from   Episcopal 
Jurisdiction,  and    frequently  had    something    like    a    special    ritual. 
(Tanner's    Notitia,    Preface ;    Fuller's    History    of   Abbeys ;    Taylor's 
Index  Monasticus,  Introduction;    Heylin's  Hist.  Reform.   Anno  1547.) 
Perhaps  the  most  outrageous  and  inexcusable  robbery  of   all  was  the 
stripping    of    the    Guilds.      It    is    astonishing    that    historians    have 
passed  over  this   shameful   measure   with   so   little   notice.     (See   on 
this    subject    Stubbs,    Const.   Hist.    vol.    i.    c.    xi.     p.    442   et    seq.) 
The   plunder    derived    from    the    ecclesiastical    corporations    was    so 
prodigious  that  it  has  served  to    draw    off    men's    attention  from  the 
consequences  which  the  abolition  of  the  Guilds  involved.     In  Taylor's 
Index  Monasticus  there  is  a  list  of  no  fewer  than  909  Guilds  given  over 
to   the    spoilers  i7i   Norfolk   alone.     In   the   very   valuable  volume   of 
Ordinances    of    Early    English    Guilds,     published    by    the     "  Early 
English  Text  Society,"  there  are  46  more  or  less  complete  Ordinances 
of  Norfolk  Guilds  that  sent  in  returns  to  the  King  in  Council  in  the 
12th  year  of  Richard  II.     The  Guilds  were  for  the  most  part  Benefit 
and  Burial  clubs  supported  by  the  subscriptions  of  the  members,  and 
enriched  from  time  to  time  by  small  bequests  of   their  members.    At 
the  meetings  of   the    Guild    of    St.    Christopher   at   Norwich,    a   very 
beautiful  prayer  was   used,  which  may  be   found  at  page  23  of   the 
volume  referred  to.     These  meetings  were  almost  always  of  a  convivial 
character,  and  legacies  are  frequently  left  to  furnish  a  dinner  for  the 
brethren  :    thus  William  Walpole,  of   Great  Shelford  (in  Cambridge- 
shire), by  his  will,  dated  20th    March,  1500,  leaves    "To  the  prefects 
of  the  Gylds  in  Great  Shelford,  viz. : — our  Lady  and  Saint  Anne  to  each 
of  them  a  Ewe.     Item,  to  the  prefect  of  the  Gylde  of  all  Halloweys  in 
Starston,  a  Bullock  and  two  quarters  Barley." — [Peterborough  Register, 
Probate  Court,  E.  6.] 

8.  Page  29.  As  I  am  not  writing  the  history  of  the  spoliations  in 
the  reigns  of  Henry  VIII.  and  his  son,  I  am  unwilling  to  give  chapter 
and  verse  for  all  the  statements  made  in  the  text.  My  readers  must 
accept  my  assurance  that  there  is  abundance  of  authority  ready  at  hand 
to  support  any  and  every  assertion  put  forward.  I  cannot,  however, 
resist  the  temptation  to  print  the  following  Proclamation,  which,  as  far 
as  I  know,  has  never  yet  been  referred  or  alluded  to  by  historians  of  this 
period.  It  will  be  news  to  some  of  my  readers  that  the  earliest  Pigeon 
Matches  on  record  were  shot  of  in  St.  PauVs  Cathedral ! 

"A  Proclamation  for  the   reformation  of  quarrels   and  other  like 
abuses  in  the  Church. 

"The  Kings  Majy  considering  that  Churches  holy  Cathedrals  and 
others  which  at  the  beginning  were  godly  instituted  for  common  prayer 
for  the  word  of  God  and  the  ministration  of  Sacraments  be  now  of  late 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  43 

time  in  many  places  and  especially  within  the  city  of  London  irreverently 
used  and  by  divers  insolent  rash  persons  sundry  ways  much  abused  so  far 
forth  that  many  quarrels  riots,  frays  bloodsheddings  have  been  made  in 
some  of  the  said  Churches  besides  shootings  of  hand  guns  to  doves,  and 
the  common  bringing  of  horses  and  mules  in  and  through  the  said 
churches  making  the  same  which  were  properly  appointed  to  God's 
service  and  common  prayer  like  a  stable  or  common  Inn,  or  rather  a  den 
or  sink  of  all  unchristliness  to  the  great  dishonour  of  God,  the  fear  of  his 
Majesty,  [and]  disquiet  of  all  such  as  for  the  time  be  then  assembled  for 
common  prayer  and  hearing  of  God^s  word  (!) 

*'  Forasmuch  as  the  insolency  of  great  numbers  using  the  said  ill 
demeanes  doth  daily  more  and  more  increase,  His  Highness  by  the 
advice  of  the  Lords  and  others  of  his  privy  council,  straitly  chargeth  and 
commandeth  that  no  manner  of  person  or  persons  of  what  state  or 
condition  soever  he  or  they  be,  do  from  henceforth  presume  to  quarrel, 
fray  or  fight,  shoot  any  hand  gun,  bring  any  horse  or  mule  into  or 
through  any  cathedral  or  other  church  or  by  any  other  ways  or  means 
irreverently  use  the  said  Churches  or  any  of  them  upon  pain  of  his 
highness'  indignation  and  imprisonment  of  his  or  their  bodies  that  so 
shall  offend  against  the   effect  of  his  present  proclamation.  .  .  . 

"Edward  VI." 

Cotton  MSS.,  Titus,  B.  II.  39. 

In  the  Bishop's  Registry  at  Norwich  there  is  a  fragment  of  a  volume  of 
the  Records  of  the  Commission  for  the  trial  of  causes  ecclesiastical,  from 
which  I  extract  the  following  curious  parallel  to  the  above  : — 

"  ix°  die  Martii  Anno  Dfii  1597  coram  Rever^o  in  Chro :  patre  ae  diio : 

Willielmo  providentia  Dei  Domino  Norvicens  Epc6 Ammon  de 

BissoN  comperuit who  being  charged  to  have  let  into  the  Palace 

chapel  (where  the  French  people  by  the  said  Reverend  father  his  licence 
do  resort  to  have  divine  service)  a  man  having  a  piece  [a  gun],  who  there 
did  shute  to  kill  pigeons  not  only  to  the  profaning  of  the  place  of  prayer, 
but  also  to  the  endangering  of  the  whole  palace  by  fire  and  terrifying  of 
some  within  the  same  ;  the  said  Ammon  confessed  that  he  had  so  done, 
&c.,  &c " 

9.  Page  31.  Tierney's  Dodd,  vol.  iii.  p.  114  ;  Burnet's  Reformation, 
p.  587. 

10.  Page  31.  Tierney's  Dodd  ;  Heylin's  Reformation,  p.  236  et  seq.  ; 
Aungier,  History  and  Antiquities  of  Syon  Monastery,  p.  96  et  seq. 

From  that  curious  and  very  rare  book,  the  Certamen  Seraphicum 
ProvincicB  Anglicc,  4to,  Duaci.  1649,  it  appears  clearly  that  on  the  re- 
establishment  of  I  the  order  not  only  were  the  old  monks  reinstated,  but 
great  numbers  of  recruits  took  the  vows.  One  of  these  persisted  in 
retaining  the  Franciscan  habit  till  his  death.  He  lived  the  life  of  a 
hermit  at  Layland  in  Lancashire,  protected  by  the  Earl  of  Derby.    He 


44  ONE   GENERATION  OF 


came  at  last  to  be  regarded  as  a  saint,  and  was  supposed  to  work  cures  in 
his  retreat,  not  only  upon  men  and  women  but  cattle.  He  went  by  the 
name  of  "  Father  John,  the  old  beggar  man,"  and  to  the  end  consistently 
refused  to  touch  money,  though  he  lived  on  the  contributions  of  the 
neighbourhood.  He  died  at  Layland  about  1590,  and  lies  buried  near 
the  north  of  the  chancel  porch. — Cert.  Seraph,  p.  13. 

The  new  foundations  of  Queen  Mary  were  at  once  confiscated  by  Queen 
Elizabeth,  in  the  first  year  of  her  reign:  See  Historical  MSS. 
Commission,  4th  Report,  App.  p.  178  et  seq. 

11.  Page  31.  "  Meantime  the  eagerness  with  which  the  country 
generally  availed  itself  of  the  permission  to  restore  the  Catholic  ritual 
proved  beyond  a  doubt  that,  except  in  London  and  a  few  large  towns,  the 
popular  feeling  was  with  the  queen," — Froude,  c.  30,  vol.  vi.  p.  83.  See 
too  Maitland's  Essays  on  the  Reformation,  Essays  viii.  and  ix. 

12.  Page  32.  Goodman  quoted  by  Maitland,  Essays  on  the  Reforma- 
tion, p.  138. 

PoNET  was  actually  "  engaged  as  a  leader,  if  not  as  an  original  plotter 
and  instigator,  in  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt's  insurrection,"  and  narrowly 
escaped  being  taken  with  Sir  Thomas  on  the  7th  February,  1554. 
Maitland  {u.s.  p.  93)  gives  in  his  text  the  passage  from  Stow  which 
details  the  circumstances. 

Goodman  too  was  implicated  in  the  same  rebellion. 

Traheron's  foul  language  is  like  the  ravings  of  a  filthy  madman.  See 
Maitland,  p.  84.  What  must  that  passage  be  like  which  "is  so  gross 
that  it  must  be  omitted ' '  ?  One  is  tempted  to  think  that  nothing 
could  be  worse  than  the  previous  paragraph. 

All  these  men  were  deeply  implicated  in  the  treasonable  plots  of 
Mary's  reign. 

IB.  Page  33.  Simpson's  Campion,  p.  46,  and  Allen's  Apology  for 
Seminary  Priests,  there  referred  to. 

14.  Page  33.  Slrype  apud  Tytler,  England  under  the  Reigns  of  Edward 
VI.  and  Mary,  vol.  i.  p.  322.  See  too  Bacon's  Preface  to  The  News  out  of 
Heaven,  p.  5  (Parker  Society).  "Your  wisdoms  see  what  a  sort  of 
unmeet  men  labour  daily  to  run  headlong  into  the  ministry,  pretending 
a  very  hot  zeal,  but  altogether  without  necessary  knowledge.  .  .  .  The 
smith  giveth  over  his  hammer  and  stithy ;  the  tailor  his  sheers  and 
metewand ;  the  shoemaker  his  malle  and  thread ;  the  carpenter  his  bill 
and  chip-axe  .  .  .  and  so  forth  of  like  states  and  degrees  ...  so  that 
now  not  without  a  cause  the  honourable  state  of  the  most  honourable 
ministry,  through  these  beastly  belly-gods  and  lazy  lubbers,  is  greatly 
defamed,  evil  spoken  of,  contemned,  despised,  and  utterly  set  at 
nought.  ..." 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  45 

15.  Page  33.     See   Statutes  of  the  Realm,  35   Henry  VIII.  e.  13.— 

"  The  King's  Imperial  Majesty,  most  benignly  calling  to  his  gracious 
remembrance  that  his  town  of  Little  Walsingham,  otherwise  called 
New  Walsingham,  which  heretofore,  as  well  through  the  great  and 
continual  trade  of  all  manner  of  merchandise  in  times  past  then  used 
and  practised,  as  also  by  and  through  the  populous  concourse  and  resort 
of  his  people  from  all  parts  of  this  Realm  in  times  past  within  the  said 
Town  freqxientcd  and  continued,  was  grown  and  commen  to  be  very 
populous  and  wealthy  and  beautifully  builded,  is  at  this  present  by  the 
great  decay  and  withdrawing  of  the  said  trades  and  merchandise  there, 
and  by  divers  other  sundry  occasions  of  late  happened,  like  to  fall  to  utter 
ruin  and  to  he  barren,  desolate,  and  unpeopled.  .  .  djc.'' 

16.  Page  35.  See  the  very  valuable  Preface  to  the  Bdbee^s  Book, 
by  Mr.  Furnival,  "Early  English  Text  Society,"  1868. 

17.  Page  36.  I  give  the  following  instances,  from  a  host  that  might 
be  adduced,  because  I  suspect  that  the  Thomas  Woodhouse  here  named 
was  a  cadet  of  the  Kimberley  family ;  and  because  Kalph  Crockett  was 
for  some  time  engaged  as  a  private  tutor  in  Norfolk.  The  title  "  Sir  " 
(Sir  Thomas  Woodhouse)  was  the  ordinary  designation  of  a  parish 
priest. 

"Sir  Thos.  Woodhouse  was  made  priest  in  the  time  of  Queen  Mary,  a 
little  before  her  death,  and  presented  to  a  parsonage  in  Lincolnshire, 
which  he  enjoyed  not  a  whole  year,  by  reason  of  the  change  of  religion 
which  he  could  not  be  contented  to  follow  ;  wherefore,  leaving  his  living, 
he  went  into  Wales,  where  for  a  while,  in  a  gentleman's  house,  he  taught 
his  sons,  but  could  not  continue  there  unless  he  would  dissemble  his 
conscience.  He  left  that  place,  and  within  a  while  was  taken  and  sent 
prisoner  to  the  Fleet  in  London,  &c.  &c." — Stonyhurst  MSS.,  Angl., 

A,  vol.  i. 

•'  Ralph  Crockett  examined,  saith  he  was  first  brought  up  in  Christ's 
College  in  Cambridge,  where  he  continued  about  three  years  ,  .  .  from 
thence  he  went  to  Tibnam  Longrowe  in  Norfolk,  where  he  taught 
children  a  year  or  more,  &c.  cfec." — P.R.O.,  Domestic  MSS.,  Eliz., 
No.  214. 

Crockett  was  hung  at  Chichester,  in  Sept.  1588 ;  Woodhouse,  at 
Tyburn,  19  June,  1573.     Add  to  these— 

"  George  Lingam.  .  .  .  The  said  Lingam  harboured  and  lodged  at 
one  Mr.  Wiltcot's,  at  Englefield  .  .  .  and  under  colour  of  teaching  the 
Virginals,  goeth  from  Papist  to  Papist :  is  thought  also  to  be  a  priest,  so 
made  in  Queen  Mary's  time,  and  like  to  be  the  man  that  was  kept  in  the 
top  of  the  said  Parkyns'  house  at  a  time  when  her  majesty  was  but  ill 
served  by  her  officers  in  a  search  there  made." — Cotton  MSS.,  Titus, 

B.  III.  63. 


CHAPTEK  I 

THE   WALPOLES   OP   HOUGHTON 

The  family  of  Walpole  has  been  settled  in  the  county 
of  Norfolk  for  at  least  six  hundred  years.  Whether  any 
faith  is  to  be  placed  in  the  tradition  which  tells  of  an 
ancient  charter  bestowed  upon  some  remote  ancestor  by 
Edward ;  whether  there  be  Norman  blood  in  their  veins ;  ^ 
whether  the  founder  of  the  house  were  some  adherent 
of  the  Conqueror  who,  after  the  revolt  of  the  Fenmen 
in  1070,  received  a  grant  of  lands  for  his  services  in  that 
dreary  but  fertile  district  through  which  the  Ouse  finds 
its  way  sluggishly  into  the  Wash,  and  where  Hereward 
the  Englishman  made  his  last  gallant  stand ;  ^  —  are 
questions  which  must  for  ever  remain  unanswered.  Cer- 
tain it  is  that  under  the  Plantagenets  the  ancestors  of 
this  ancient  Norfolk  family  were  seated  at  Walpole  St. 
Peter's,  where  they  had  a  manor  and  lands,  which  they 
retained  in  their  possession  as  late  as  the  year  1797, 
when  an  Act  of  Parliament  compelled  them  to  sell  both 
the  one  and  the  other,  after  the  decision  of  the  great 
Houghton  lawsuit. 

They  appear  to  have  migrated  from  Marshland  in  the 
reign  of  Henry  II.,  3  and  to  have  taken  up  their  residence 
at  Houghton,  where  Sir  Henry  de  Walpole  held  one 
knight's  fee  of  the  fee  of  Blaumister,  and  the  fourth  part 
of  a  knight's  fee  of  the  Honour  of  Wermegay ;  and  in 
the  reign  of  King  John  either  he  or  another  Henry  de 
Walpole  occurs  as  one  of  those  who  paid  a  fine  of  £100 
for  release  from  prison,  on  giving  security  for  his  allegiance 
to  the  king  in  time  to  come.     A  Sir  Henry  de  Walpole, 

4g 


ONE   GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE    47 

Kt.,  had  a  mansion  at  Ely  in  1272.*  Another  of  the  name 
figures  as  a  supporter  of  Simon  de  Montfort  in  the  barons' 
war,  and  as  taking  a  leading  part  in  the  rebellion;  while 
in  the  thirteenth  century  the  Walpoles,  then  a  "  knightly 
family,"  appear  on  more  than  one  occasion  to  have  held 
ofi&ce  in  the  royal  Court.  Throughout  this  century,  too, 
they  are  conspicuous  as  ecclesiastics.4  Edmund  de  Walpole 
was  Abbot  of  St.  Edmund's  Bury  from  1247  to  1256, 
at  a  time  when,  s  thanks  to  the  genius  and  administrative 
ability  of  Abbot  Sampson,  St.  Edmund's  was  one  of  the 
most  wealthy  and  important  abbeys  in  England ;  and 
Eadulphus  de  Walpole  was  successively  Bishop  of  Norwich 
and  Ely  from  1288  to  1302,  his  tomb  being  conspicuous 
in  the  cathedral  of  the  latter  see,  standing  before  the 
high  altar  of  the  church  at  the  present  day.  In  1335 
Simon  de  Walpole  was  Chancellor  of  the  University  of 
Cambridge,^  about  the  same  time  that  his  kinsman,  Sir 
Henry  de  Walpole,  was  returned  as  one  of  the  Knights 
of  the  Shire  to  serve  in  the  Parliament  summoned  to 
meet  at  York  in  the  7th  year  of  Edward  III.  All  through 
the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries  the  Subsidy  Rolls, 
which  still  exist  in  the  Record  Office,  show  the  Walpoles  to 
have  been  residing  at  Houghton,  and  to  have  been  men 
of  substance  and  influence  in  the  Hundreds  of  Smethdon, 
Freebridge,  North  Greenhow,  and  Brothercross ;  their 
manor  of  Houghton  being  handed  down  from  father  to 
son,  and  their  possessions  gradually  increasing  as  time 
went  on.  Two  members  of  the  family  7  appear  to  have 
attained  to  eminence  as  judges  in  the  reigns  of  Edward  III. 
and  Richard  II.,  one  of  them  being  even  Chancellor,  if, 
as  seems  highly  probable,  Mr.  Rye's  conjecture  regarding 
Adam  de  Houghton  be  founded  on  fact. 

An  offshoot  of  the  Norfolk  family  became  early  estab- 
lished in  Lincolnshire ;  and  the  Walpoles  of  Pinchbeck 
were  for  centuries  one  of  the  leading  families  in  the  county : 
another  branch  acquired  lands  in  Suffolk,  the  Walpoles 
of  Brockley  being  seated  there  from  the  time  of  Edward  I. 
*  Historical  MSS.  Commission,  6th  Report,  p.  290&. 


48  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


Thomas  Walpole  of = Joan  Cobbe. 
Houghton,  died  1514. 


Edwabd  W.  of =Lucy  Eobsart.  Henky  W.  of =Margaret  Holtoft. 

Houghton,  died  1559.    I  Herpley,  died  1554. 


-^  John  W.  of =Catherine  John  W.  of = Catherine  Cheistopher  W. 

Houghton,      Calibut.  Herpley,  Serjt.-    Knyvet.  of  Docking 

d.  1588.  at-law,  d.  1558.  and  Anmer. 

I  I 

—  Edward  W.  b.  1560.  William  W.  b.  1543.  Henry  W.  b.  1558 

down  to  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century ;  ^  and  I  meet 
with  three  generations  of  them  as  owners  of  considerable 
estates  and  a  capital  mansion  called  Walpole's  Place  in 
Cambridgeshire,  where  they  were  evidently  the  chief  land- 
owners in  Great  Shelford  and  the  contiguous  parishes.9 

On  the  24th  January,  1513-14,^°  Thomas  Walpole  of 
Houghton,  Esq.,  was  gathered  to  his  fathers.  He  left 
behind  him  two  sons,  and  divided  his  estates  between 
them  ;  the  manors  descended  to  Edward,  the  elder  son ; 
the  outlying  lands  were  left  to  Henry,  the  second ;  who, 
though  his  Lincolnshire  estates  were  larger  than  those 
in  Norfolk,  appears  to  have  resided  at  Herpley,  where 
he  died  in  1554. 

It  is  with  the  grandsons  of  these  two  men  that  the 
present  work  is  chiefly  concerned. 

Edward,  the  elder  son,  had  taken  to  wife  Lucy,  daughter 
of  Sir   Terry   Eobsart   of   Siderston,    a   parish   contiguous 
to   Houghton,    and   with  her   appears  to  have  obtained  a 
sufficient   marriage   portion.     Sir  Terry  Eobsart  had  only 
one   other   child,   John,   or,    as   he   is    usually   called,    Sir 
John  Eobsart,"  who  twice  served  the  office  of  High  Sheriff 
for     his    native    county.     Sir    John    Eobsart    resided    at 
Stanfield  Hall  near  Wymondham ;  and  when  Dudley,  Earl 
of  Warwick,   was  sent  down  to  suppress  the   formidable 
rebellion   of   Kett    "  the   Norfolk   Tanner,"   it   seems  that 
the  earl,  with  his  son   the   Lord   Eobert   Dudley,   passed 
the    night    at    Stanfield    Hall,    and    there    Lord    Eobert, 
probably  for  the  first  time,  saw  the  beautiful  Amy  Eobsart, 
whom  he  married  on  the  4th  June  of  the  following  year, 
the  king  being  present  at  the  ceremony,  which  was  carried 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  49 


Thomas  WAiiPOLK  of  <=»  Joan  Cobbe. 
Houghton,  died  1514.  I 


Edwabd  W.  of =Lucy  EobBart.  Henkt  W.  of =Margaret  Holtoft. 


Houghton,  died  1559 


Herpley,  died  1564. 


John  W.  of -Catherine  John  W.  of = Catherine  Chbistophbb  W  . 

Houghton.      Calibut.  Herpley.  Serjt.-    Knyvet.  of  Docking 

d  1588.  at-law,  d.  1558.  and  Anmer. 

Edward  W.  b.  1560.  William  W.  b.  1543.  Henbt  W.  b.  1558. 


out  with  great  magnificence.  Upon  the  newly  married 
pair  the  Manors  of  Siderston  and  Bircham,  and  other 
property,  were  settled,  with  remainder,  failing  issue,  to 
the  right  heirs  of  Sir  John ;  in  other  words,  if  Amy 
Eobsart  should  prove  childless,  the  offspring  of  Edward 
Walpole  of  Houghton  would  in  right  of  their  mother 
inherit  the  Eobsart  property. 

Henry  Walpole,  the  younger  brother  of  this  Edward, 
had  married  a  Lincolnshire  heiress,  ^^  one  Margaret  Holtoft 
of  Whaplode,  and  with  her  he  came  into  large  and 
valuable  estates.  As  an  equivalent,  his  father  had  settled 
upon  him  a  considerable  landed  property  in  Herpley, 
Rudham,  and  the  adjoining  parishes. 

Edward  Walpole  of  Houghton,  though  his  wife  had  been 
no  portionless  damsel,  was  by  no  means  so  rich  a  man 
as  his  brother ;  nevertheless  by  prudent  management  he 
contrived  to  increase  rather  than  diminish  his  resources, 
and  at  his  death,  in  1559,  he  was  able  to  make  ample 
provision  for  three  sons — John,  Richard,  and  Terry. 

John,  the  eldest  son,  succeeded  his  father  at  Houghton 
in  the  first  year  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  He  too  had  married 
well.  His  wife  was  Catherine,  eldest  daughter  of  William 
Calibut  of  Coxford,  Esq.,  ^3  a  man  of  wealth  and  substance, 
whose  ancestors  had  been  for  some  generations  large  land- 
owners in  this  part  of  Norfolk,  but,  as  he  had  no  son, 
his  inheritance  would  devolve  at  his  death  upon  his 
daughters.  For  some  time  it  looked  as  if  the  Houghton 
estate  would  pass  away  to  the  Herpley  Squire,  for 
daughters   only  were   at   first   the   fruit   of   the   marriage. 

4 


50  ONE   GENERATION  OF 


It  was  not  till  the  beginning  of  1560  ^'>  that  a  son  appeared. 
The  child  was  named  after  his  grandfather,  Edward,  and 
in  the  following  year  another  son  was  born,  who  was 
called  after  his  mother's  surname,  Calibut. 

Not  many  months  after  the  birth  of  the  elder  son  Amy 
Dudley  died,  and  died  childless ;  and  thus,  when  the  year 
1560  ends,  we  have  John  Walpole  of  Houghton  tenant  for 
life  of  the  Norfolk  and  Suffolk  manors,  owner  in  fee-simple 
of  an  extensive  property  in  the  former  county,  and  heir-at- 
law  to  all  the  Eobsart  estates  at  the  death  of  Lord  Eobert 
Dudley,  afterwards  Earl  of  Leicester,  a  man  of  vigorous 
constitution,  and  not  yet  thirty  years  of  age.  ^5 

Meanwhile,  as  has  been  said,  Henry  Walpole  of  Herpley 
had  died  six  years  before,  leaving  behind  him  three  sons, 
with  two  of  whom  only  have  we  much  concern.  ^^  His 
eldest  son  had  died  before  his  father,  leaving,  however, 
issue  who  inherited  the  Lincolnshire  estates.  The  second 
son  was  John  Walpole  of  Herpley,  one  of  the  most  success- 
ful barristers  of  his  time.  He  was  of  Gray's  Inn,  and  was 
appointed  Lent  Eeader  of  that  society  in  the  third  year 
of  Edward  VI.  In  the  first  year  of  Queen  Mary  he  was 
returned  M.P.  for  Lynn  ;  the  next  year  he  was  raised  to 
the  degree  of  Serjeant-at-law,  and  Dugdale  has  left  us  an 
account  of  the  magnificent  feast  which  was  given  at  the 
Inner  Temple  on  the  occasion  of  his  receiving  the  coif.  '7 
He  was  probably  the  Mr.  Walpole  appointed  to  examine 
Throgmorton  in  1556."  It  is  evident  that  his  practice  was 
extensive  and  his  income  correspondingly  large,  and  as  fast 
as  he  made  his  money  he  proceeded  to  buy  land  in  Norfolk, 
and  especially  in  his  own  part  of  the  county.  ^^  But  while 
he  was  adding  manor  to  manor,  and  in  the  midst  of  a  career 
which  must  have  led  to  the  highest  honours  and  emolu- 
ments of  his  profession,  he  was  cut  off  in  the  prime  of  life, 
leaving  behind  him  an  only  son,  William,  a  boy  of  thirteen, 
and  four  daughters,  all  unmarried  and  under  age. 

Christopher  Walpole,  the  Serjeant's  younger  brother, 
and  third   son   of   Henry   Walpole  of   Herpley,  had  been 

*  Froude,  vol.  vi.  p.  443. 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  5* 


Thomas  WAiiPOLE  of = Joan  Cobbe. 
Houghton,  died  1514.  I 


Edward  W.  of = Lucy  Robsart.  Henby  W.  of = Margaret  Holtoft. 

Houghton,  died  1559.    I  Herpley,  died  1554. 


I       T~r .         ^        I 


John  W.  of«Catherine  John  W.  of = Catherine  Chktstopheb  W . 

Houghton,      Calibut.  Herpley,  Serjt.-    Knyvet.  of  Docking 

d.  1588.  at-law,  d.  1558.  and  Anmer. 

Edward  W.  b.  1560.  William  W.  b.  1543.  Henry  W.  b.  155F. 


amply  provided  for  by  his  father's  will.  At  the  end  of 
Queen  Mary's  reign  he  was  settled  at  Docking  Hall,  a 
house  about  five  miles  from  Houghton.  He  had  married 
Margery,  daughter  of  Eichard  Beckham  of  Narford,  and 
with  her  appears  to  have  obtained  something  like  a  fortune, 
for  prudent  marriages  seem  always  to  have  been  the 
characteristic  of  the  race.  A  few  months  after  his  brother 
the  Serjeant's  death  Christopher's  first  child  was  born.  ^9 
The  boy  was  baptized  at  Docking  in  October  1558,  and 
took  the  name  of  his  grandfather,  Henry.  This  is  he  who 
is  the  central  figure  in  the  narrative  of  the  following  pages. 

The  Docking  family  was  increased  by  a  fresh  child  almost 
every  year,  and  at  the  close  of  1570  it  consisted  of  six  sons 
and  three  daughters,  one  son,  John,  having  died  in  infancy 
ten  years  before. 

The  household  at  Docking  had  become  too  large  for  the 
house,  and  an  opportunity  having  occurred  for  purchasing 
the  neighbouring  estate  of  Anmer  Hall,  ""^  with  a  large  tract 
of  land  in  Anmer  and  Dersingham,  Christopher  Walpole 
removed  his  family  to  the  new  residence  in  1575 ;  his  estate 
lying  immediately  contiguous  to  his  cousin's  domain  at 
Houghton  on  the  one  side,  and  to  his  nephew's  property  at 
Herpley  on  the  other. 

First  and  last  the  possessions  of  the  three  squires 
stretched  over  a  tract  covering  not  much  short  of  fifty 
square  miles.  It  was  wild  heath  and  scrub  for  the  most 
part,  where  huge  flocks  of  sheep  roamed  at  large  ;  except 
where  the  "common  fields"  of  arable  land  and  the  small 
patches  of  meadow  and  pasture  supplied  with  cereals  and 


52  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

fodder  the  population  of  villages  which  were  then  perhaps 
more  thickly  inhabited  than  now.  The  peasantry  were 
dismally  ignorant,  timid,  and  slavish;  each  man's  village 
was  his  world,  and  he  shrank  from  looking  beyond  it.  The 
turf  or  the  brushwood  of  the  parish  gave  him  fuel:  the  bees 
gave  him  all  the  sweetness  he  ever  tasted  :  the  sheep-skin 
served  him  for  clothing,  and  its  wool,  which  the  women 
spun,  served  for  the  squire's  doublet  and  hose.  The  lord  of 
the  manor  allowed  no  corn  to  be  ground  save  at  his  own 
mill ;  and  he  who  was  so  fortunate  as  to  own  some  diminu- 
tive salt-pan  was  the  rich  man  of  the  district.  ^^  It  is  very 
difficult  for  us  to  throw  ourselves  back  in  imagination  to  a 
time  when  nothing  was  too  insignificant  to  be  made  the 
subject  of  a  Special  bequest.  Not  only  do  we  meet  with 
instances  of  bed  and  bedding,  brass  pots,  a  single  silver 
spoon,  a  table,  and  the  smallest  household  utensils  left  in 
the  wills  of  people  of  some  substance  and  position ;  but  old 
shoes,  swarms  of  bees,  half  a  bushel  of  rye,  and  as  small  a 
sum  as  sixpence  are  common  legacies  even  down  to  the  end 
of  the  sixteenth  century.  The  "cottage"  of  the  labourer, 
a  creature  as  much  tied  to  the  soil  as  his  forefather  the 
"  villein  "  (who  had  passed  with  the  land  as  a  chattel  when 
an  estate  changed  owners),  was  nothing  but  a  mud  hovel 
with  a  few  sods  for  roof,  and,  as  a  dwelling,  incomparably 
less  comfortable  than  the  gipsy's  tent  is  in  our  own  days. 
The  manor-house,  on  the  other  hand,  small  though  it  were, 
exhibited  a  certain  barbaric  prodigality.  Foreigners  were 
amazed  at  the  extent  of  English  households,  out  of  all 
proportion  to  the  accommodation  provided  for  them.  ^^  In 
the  latter  half  of  Elizabeth's  reign  the  fashion  of  building 
large  houses  in  the  country  parishes  prevailed  to  a  sur- 
prising extent,  and  this,  with  other  causes,  hastened  the 
ruin  of  many  an  old  county  family  which  had  held  its 
own  for  generations  ;  but  at  her  accession  the  houses  of  the 
landed  gentry  were  very  small  and  unpretending,  and  their 
furniture  almost  incredibly  scanty  ;  while  for  the  agricul- 
tural labouring  classes,  there  were  tens  of  thousands  of 
them  who,  as  we  understand  the  words,  had  never  in  their 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  53 


Thomas  WAiiPOLK  of = Joan  Cobbe. 
Houghton,  died  1514. 


Edwakd  W.  of=Lucy  Robsart.  Henby  W.  of =Margaret  Holtoft. 

Houghton,  died  1559.    I  Herpley,  died  1554. 


John  W.  of = Catherine  John  W.  of = Catherine  Christopher  W. 

Houghton,      Calibut.  Herpley,  Serjt.-    Knyvet.  of  Docking 

d.  15S8.  at-law,  d.  1558.  and  Anmer. 

I  I 

Edward  W.  b.  1560  William  W.  b.  1543.  Henry  W.  b.  1558. 


lives  slept  in  a  bed.  ^3  Eoads  there  were  none.  Fakenham, 
the  nearest  town  to  Houghton,  was  nine  miles  off  as  the 
crow  flies,  and  Lynn  was  eleven  or  twelve.  As  men  rode 
across  the  level  moors,  now  and  then  starting  a  bustard  on 
their  way,  ^4  or  scaring  some  fox  or  curlew,  there  was  little 
to  catch  the  eye  save  the  church  towers,  which  are  here 
planted  somewhat  thickly ;  but  Coxford  Abbey,  not  yet  in 
ruins — indeed  part  of  it  actually  at  this  time  inhabited  ^s— 
and  Flitcham  Priory,  a  cell  of  Walsingham,  frowned  down 
upon  the  passer-by, — the  desolate  ghosts  of  what  had  been 
but  twenty  years  before. 

The  great  man  of  the  family  at  this  time  was  young 
William  Walpole,  the  Serjeant's  son  and  heir,  though  his 
Norfolk  cousins  could  have  known  but  little  of  him.  When 
his  father  was  made  Serjeant  in  1554  ^^  he  entered  his  son 
at  Gray's  Inn,  I  presume  in  compliment  to  the  Inn, 
although  the  boy  was  only  in  his  twelfth  year.  He  had 
been  left  to  the  guardianship  of  Thomas  Thirlby,  Bishop  of 
Ely,  to  whom,  during  the  minority,  the  Manor  of  Felthams 
in  Great  Massingham  was  left  to  defray  the  charges  of  his 
ward's  education ;  and  though  on  the  accession  of  Queen 
Elizabeth  ^7  the  wardship  was  bestowed  upon  his  mother, 
and  subsequently,  on  her  marriage  with  Thomas  Scarlett, 
the  Serjeant's  friend  and  one  of  his  executors,  was  trans- 
ferred to  him  and  Eobert  Coke,  Esq.,  of  Mileham,  father  of 
Sir  Edward  Coke,  afterwards  Lord  Chief  Justice,  yet  the 
provisions  of  the  will  were  faithfully  carried  out,  and  Bishop 
Thirlby  became  de  facto  guardian,  and  superintended  the 
lad's  early  education  according  to  his  father's  desire. 


54     ONE   GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE 


Thus,  in  this  district,  lying  between  Fakenham  and  Ely, 
there  was  no  family  at  the  beginning  of  Queen  Elizabeth's 
reign  at  all  to  be  compared  with  this  Walpole  clan  in  the 
extent  of  their  possessions  and  the  width  of  their  local 
influence  and  resources.  For  the  young  heir  of  Herpley 
any  future  might  be  in  store,  and  the  family  connections 
had  been  extended  with  great  prudence  by  the  marriages 
of  the  daughters  with  the  leading  gentry  of  the  country 
round — the  Cobbes  of  Sandringham,  the  Eussels  of  Rud- 
ham,  and  other  substantial  squires. 

While  young  William  Walpole  was  away  in  London,  his 
mother,  with  her  second  husband,  kept  up  the  establish- 
ment at  Herpley,  and  as  the  boys  at  Houghton  and  Anmer 
grew,  there  must  have  been  almost  daily  intercourse 
between  the  several  households.  And  now  that  question, 
which  had  begun  to  be  a  very  serious  one  for  many  a 
country  gentleman  at  this  time,  began  to  press  upon  such 
men  as  Christopher  and  John  Walpole — men  with  eight 
sons  between  them,  and  doubtless  not  without  ambition 
which  their  prospects  or  their  pride  of  parentage  might 
well  be  supposed  to  justify.  If  these  growing  boys  were 
to  take  their  place  in  the  world,  and  make  their  way 
to  distinction, — perhaps  even  follow  in  the  steps  of  their 
uncle  the  serjeant,  and  raise  the  family  to  all  that  shadowy 
greatness  which  the  traditions  of  the  house  were  not  likely 
to  diminish, — where  and  how  was  their  education  to  be 
carried  on? 


NOTES  TO   CHAPTER   I 

1.  Page  46.  The  names  of  members  of  the  family  which  occur  in 
the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries  indicate  a  Norman  origin,  e.g., 
Reginald  de  Walpole,  Henry  I.  ;  Jocelinede  Wali^ole,  Eichard  I.  Lemare 
de  Walpole  and  Beatrix  his  wife,  about  the  time  of  King  John,  assign 
lands  to  the  prior  of  Lewes,  the  deed  being  executed  first  in  St.  Nicholas 
Chapel,  Lynn,  and  afterwards  in  the  churchyard  of  Castleacre. — (Blome- 
field,  viii.  504.)  We  meet  also  during  this  period  with  the  names 
Egeline,  Claeice,  Alan,  and  Osbert  Walpole.  See  Collins,  and 
especially  Mr.  Rye's  Paper,  "  Notes  on  the  Early  Pedigree  of  Walpole 
of  Houghton,"  in  the  Norfolk  Antiquarian  Miscellany,  part  i.  p.  267  et  seq. 

2.  Page  46.    Freeman's  Norman  Conquest,  vol.  iv.  p.  463  et  seq. 

3.  Page  46.  Collins's  Peerage,  s.v.  "  Walpole  Lord  Walpole."  It  is 
evident  that  Collins  had  access  not  only  to  charters  and  family  docu- 
ments which  since  his  time  have  perished,  or  at  least  disappeared,  but 
that  the  registers  of  Houghton  and  many  of  the  adjoining  parishes  were 
placed  at  his  disposal,  and  laid  under  contribution.  I  suspect  that 
these  latter  were  never  returned  to  the  several  churches  to  which  they 
belonged :  there  is  an  unusual  absence  of  early  parish  registers  within 
a  radius  of  five  or  six  miles  round  Houghton.  In  every  case  where  I 
have  had  an  opportunity  of  testing  his  work  I  have  found  Collins 
scrupulously  accurate,  and  my  own  researches  have  only  served  to 
increase  my  confidence  in  him  as  an  antiquary  and  genealogist  of  a 
very  high  order.  Of  course  the  vast  wealth  of  manuscript  sources  now 
open  to  students  at  the  Record  Office  and  other  depositories  were  not 
accessible  to  inquirers  in  Collins's  days,  and  I  believe  the  Subsidy  Rolls, 
which  are  a  rich  mine  for  the  genealogist,  were  not  known  or  even  dis- 
covered till  comparatively  lately. 

4.  Page  47.    Rye,  u.s. ,  p.  279. 

5.  Page  47.  See  Chronica  Jocelini  de  Brakelonda  (Camden  Society, 
1840).  This  charming  volume  is  the  basis  of  Mr.  Carlyle's  Past  and 
Present. 

6.  Page  47.  Le  Neve's  Fasti  Eccles.  Anglic,  vol.  iii.  598.  William 
Walpole  was  elected  Prior  of  Ely  some  time  before  10th  August,  1397. 

55 


56  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

He  was  in  possession  of  that  office  20th  September,  1401  (at  which  time 
the  church  was  visited  by  Archbishop  Arundel) ,  and  resigned  soon  after. 
— Kymer,  Foedera,  viii.  p.  9,  quoted  in  Bentham's  History  of  Ely 
Cathedral,  4to,  Camb.  1771. 

7.  Page  47.  Rye,  u.s.  They  certainly  were  both  Norfolk  men,  but 
can  scarcely  have  been  father  and  son,  as  Mr.  Foss  {Judges,  vol.  iii. 
p.  447,  and  iv.  p.  59)  suggests. 

8.  Page  48.  Gage's  History  of  Thingoe  Hundred  (4to,  1838),  pp.  94 
and  359;  Gardner's  History  of  Duimich  (4to,  1754),  p.  197. 

9.  Page  48.     See  Note  7,  page  41. 

10.  Page  48.  For  the  date,  his  Inquisition  p.m.  is  the  authority. — 
Chancery  Inq.  (P.E.O.)  6°  Henry  VHI.  Norfolk,  No.  49. 

11.  Page  48.  In  his  will  he  calls  himself  "John  Eobsakt,  Esquier." 
In  the  inquisitions  taken  at  Ipswich  on  the  13th  November,  and  at 
Diss  in  October  1554  he  is  described  as  a  knight,  as  he  is  also  in  the 
contracts  entered  into  between  himself  and  John  Earl  of  Warwick,  in 
May  1550.  He  was  twice  High  Sheriff  for  the  counties  of  Norfolk  and 
Suffolk,  in  1547  and  1551,  and  bore  for  arms.  Vert,  a  lion  rampant  or, 
vulned  in  the  shoulder. 

The  terms  of  the  marriage  contract  between  him  and  the  Earl  of 
Warwick  are  curious.  The  earl  settles  all  that  the  reversion  of  his  site, 
circuit,  and  precinct  of  the  late  Priory  of  Coxford,  and  of  all 
that  the  manor  of  Coxford  in  the  county  of  Norfolk,  .  .  .  and  of 
the  rectories  and  churches  of  East  Rudham,  West  Rudham,  Browns- 
THORPE,  and  Barmer  ;  and  the  moiety  of  the  rectory  of  Barnham, 
and  also  of  the  manors  and  farms  of  East  Rudham,  West  Rudham, 
Barmer,  Tittleshall,  Siderston,  Thorpmarket,  and  Bradfield, 
with  all  their  rights  ..."  being  parcell  of  the  Possessions  and 
Revenues  of  Thomas,  late  Duke  of  Norfolk,  of  high  treason  attainted  " 

.  .  upon  his  son  Robert  Dudley  and  Amy,  daughter  of  Sir  John 
RoBSART,  and  upon  their  issue,  and  in  default  of  such  issue,  upon  the 
right  heirs  of  Lord  Robert.  He  further  settles  an  immediate  annuity  of 
£50  on  Robert  and  Amy,  to  be  paid  out  of  his  manor  of  Burton  Lisle  in 
the  county  of  Leicester  ;  such  annuity  to  cease  on  the  death  or  marriage 
of  "the  lady  Mary's  grace,  sister  to  y*^  King's  Majesty."  Besides  this 
the  earl  covenants  to  pay  to  Sir  John  Robsart  "  at  the  sealing  of  these 
presents  "  the  su7n  of  two  hundred  pounds. 

Sir  John  on  his  part  settles  the  manors  of  Sidestern  and  Newton 
juxta  Bircham  in  the  county  of  Norfolk,  and  the  manor  of  Great 
Bircham  in  the  said  county,  and  the  manor  of  Bulkham  in  the  county 
of  Suffolk,  "  upon  himself  and  his  wife,  the  Lady  Elizabth,"  for  life, 


^  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  57 

and  after  their  death  upon  the  Ejaid  Robert  and  Amy  and  their  issue  ;  in 
default  of  issue  the  remainder  to  revert  to  the  right  heirs  of  Sir  John, 
who  covenants  moreover  to  pay  an  annuity  of  £20  a  year  to  Robert  and 
Amy,  and  at  his  death  to  leave  them  a  legacy  of  "  three  thousand  sheep 
to  be  left  in  a  stock  going  on  the  premises  in  Norfolk  and  Suffolk 
aforesaid."     The  earl  signs  and  seals  on  the  25th  May,  1550. 

Great  as  the  advantages  appear  to  be  on  the  face  of  these  documents, 
as  conferred  by  the  Earl  of  Warwick  upon  his  son,  they  proved  in  the 
issue  very  small  indeed.  The  attainder  upon  Thomas,  third  Duke  of 
Norfolk,  was  reversed  at  the  accession  of  Queen  Mary,  and  his  lands 
were  restored  to  him.  The  annuity  of  £50  ceased  at  the  marriage  of 
Queen  Mary,  and  Lord  Robert  and  his  wife  must  have  been  in  great 
measure  dependent  upon  Sir  John  Robsart  during  the  whole  of  Mary's 
reign ;  for  it  must  be  remembered  that  Warwick  (then  Duke  of  North- 
umberland) perished  on  the  scaffold  on  the  22nd  August,  1553. 

In  addition  to  all  that  Lord  Robert  obtained  with  his  wife  in  the 
counties  of  Norfolk  and  Suffolk  (and  the  Siderston  property  alone 
amounted  to  more  than  four  thousand  acres,  with  thirty-six  "mes- 
suages "  and  fifteen  "  cottages  ")  there  was  another  manor  in  Shropshire, 
Oldbury,  which  Amy  inherited,  and  the  reversion  of  which  John 
Walpole  of  Houghton  sold  in  1566  to  Arthur  Robsart,  an  illegitimate 
son  of  Sir  John's,  for  £S50.— Close  Rolls,  8  Elizabeth,  No.  706.  This 
son  was  living  at  Oldbury  Hall  in  1595,  and  had  then  been  married 
for  about  thirty  years  to  Margaret,  relict  of  Anthony  Cocket  of  Sibton 
CO.  Suffolk,  Esquire.  She  is  described  as  "  nunc  uxor  Arthuri  Robsarte, 
gen.,  de  Oulbery  Hall  alias  Blakely  Hall,  in  Com.  Salopise." — MS.  in  the 
Bishop^s  Registry,  Norwich. 

The  original  of  the  marriage  settlement  is  at  Longleat,  in  the  pos- 
session of  the  Marquis  of  Bath,  and  appears  to  have  been  discovered 
there  some  years  ago  by  the  Rev.  J.  E.  Jackson,  F.S.A.  The  grant  of 
the  annuity  of  £20  by  Sir  John  Robsart  is  at  the  Record  Office  [Miscell. 
Augment,  vol.  vii.  112,  Edward  VI.),  as  are  the  p.m.  inquisitions  (1  and  2 
Philip  and  Mary,  co.  Suff.  62,  co.  Norf.  63).  The  account  of  the 
marriage  of  Lord  Robert  and  Amy  Robsart  is  to  be  found  in  the  Diary 
of  King  Edward  VI.  in  the  British  Museum.— Co«o?i  MSS.,  No.  110. 

12.  Page  49.  Blomefield,  and  they  who  follow  him,  all  assert  that  she 
was  a  daughter  of  Gilbert  Holtoft,  second  Baron  of  the  Exchequer, 
who  died  long  before  she  was  born.  It  is  quite  certain  that  she  was 
not  descended  from  the  judge  at  all.  I  have  printed  Gilbert  Holtoft's 
will,  in  the  Original  Papers,  Norf.  and  Noriv.  Archceol.  Soc,  vol.  viii. 
p.  179.  He  had  not  an  acre  of  land  at  Whaplode.  On  the  other  hand, 
in  a  Subsidy  Roll  of  the  reign  of  Henry  VII.  (?)  now  in  the  Record 
Office,  containing  the  names  of  persons  in  the  county  of  Lincoln 
holding  lands  or  rents  of  the  value  of  £40  a  year,  I  find  among  the 


58  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

twenty-two  names  that  of  "Wills.  Haltoft  de  Quaplode,  Sen.,"  by 
which  it  appears  he  had  probably  a  son  named  William,  who  lived  at 
Whaplode  at  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century,  from  whose  daughter, 
Margaret,  the  Whaplode  property  came  to  the  Walpoles.  The  similarity 
in  the  form  of  the  name  Guilielnms,  often  written  Gilelm  and  Gilbert, 
will  account  for  the  mistake.  At  the  death  of  John  Walpole  of 
Whaplode,  Esq.,  in  1590,  without  issue,  the  estates  were  sold  according 
to  the  instructions  of  his  will,  and  the  great  bulk  of  his  property  was 
left  to  his  widow,  who  survived  him  forty  years.  By  her  will  (P.C.C. 
Scroope,  f.  15),  dated  20th  October,  1629,  she  directed  that  a  monument 
to  her  first  husband's  memory  should  be  erected  in  Prestwold  Church, 
CO.  Leicester,  which  I  believe  still  exists  there. — Nichols,  Hist.  Leic. 
iii.  359. 

13.  Page  49.  Though  the  Calibuts  had  been  settled  in  Norfolk 
from  a  very  early  period,  their  name  does  not  occur  in  the  lists  of  gentry 
of  the  county  returned  by  the  Commissioners  to  Henry  VI.  in  1433 
(Fuller's  Warthies,  iii.  460).  The  family  appear  to  have  first  risen  to 
wealth  and  importance  through  the  success  of  one  of  its  members  at  the 
bar  :  Francis  Calibut  was  a  Governor  of  Lincoln's  Inn  in  the  16th  and 
24th  years  of  Henry  VII. ,  and  was  Autumn  Reader  of  that  Society  in 
the  7th  and  12th  years  of  the  same  reign  (Dugdale,  Orig.  Jur.).  He 
died  on  the  5th  March,  9  Henry  VIII.,  seised  of  the  manor  of  Foxes 
alias  Sandars  in  Castle  Acre,  and  about  three  thousand  acres  in  Castle 
Acre,  West  Lexham,  East  Lexham,  and  the  adjoining  parishes,  with  the 
manor  of  West  Lexham,  the  advowson  of  Little  Dunham,  and  a  great 
deal  else  which  is  specified.  His  son  John  married  Bridget,  daughter 
and  heir  of  Sir  John  Boleyn,  and  died  on  the  20th  February,  1553. 
This  John  left  behind  him  two  sons,  John  Calibut  of  Castle  Acre 
[who  died  at  Upton,  in  Northamptonshire,  23rd  October,  1570,  leaving 
four  daughters,  who  divided  his  inheritance]  and  William  Calibut 
of  Coxford,  Gent.,  father  of  Catherine  Walpole,  and  other  daughters. 
I  suspect  this  William  was  "learned  in  the  law"  :  he  certainly  was  a 
man  of  wealth  and  consideration,  and  he  lived  for  some  time  at  Coxford 
Abbey.  By  his  will,  dated  1st  August,  1575,  it  appears  he  spent  his  last 
days  at  Houghton,  and  he  leaves  20s.  to  the  "household  servants" 
there. 

In  the  will  of  his  daughter  Catherine  Walpole,  dated  16th  June, 
5  James  I.,  she  leaves  to  her  granddaughter  Elizabeth  Walpole,  "  my 
chain  of  gold  sometime  William  Calibut's  my  father's,  deceased,  by 
estimation  worth  one  hundred  marks."  William  Calibut's  own  will, 
to  one  who  can  "read  between  the  lines,"  betrays  an  unfair  and  cruel 
disposition  of  his  property  in  favour  of  the  Walpoles,  and  indicates  that 
he  was  a  person  of  strong  Puritan  tendencies. 

What  Blomefield  means  by  talking  of  an  Edgar  Calibut  who  was 
Serjeant-at-law,  I  cannot  understand.  No  such  name  appears  in  Dugdale. 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  59 


There  was  an  Edward  Calibut,  with  whom  Roger  Ascham  kept  up  a 
correspondence  for  many  years.  Some  of  Ascham's  letters  to  him  have 
been  printed,  but  there  are  several  still  unpublished  in  the  possession  of 
Matthew  Wilson,  Esq.  of  Eshton  Hall. 

A  Robert  Calibut,  of  St.  John's  College,  took  his  B.A.  degree  at 
Cambridge  in  1551,  and  Henry  Calibut  was  parson  of  Cranwich,  co. 
Norfolk,  from  1533  to  1560 ;  he  left  some  liberal  legacies  behind  him, 
but  in  his  will  he  mentions  no  relatives  of  his  own  name.  There  were 
Calibuts  at  Grimeston  in  1594,  and  on  the  24th  November  of  that  year 
Edward  the  son  of  James  Calibut  was  baptized  there.  As  late  as  1640 
I  find  an  Andrew  Calibut,  who  marries  Dorothy  Curzon  at  St.  Martin's 
at  Palace  Norwich,  on  the  29th  June. — Francis  Calibut's  p.m.  inq. 
Chancery,  9  Henry  VIII.,  No.  125;  John  Calibut's  the  elder,  u.s.,  2  and 
3  Philip  and  Mary,  No.  52  ;  John  Calibut's  the  younger.  Wards  and 
Liveries,  12  Elizabeth,  vol.  xii.  No.  74  ;  William  Calibut's  will,  Reg. 
Norvic.  Ep.  Cawston ;  Catherine  Walpole's  will,  w.s.,  Reg.  Coker. 

14.  Page  50.  Collins,  who  had  seen  the  register,  gives  the  date  of  his 
baptism  at  Houghton  28th  January,  1559-60. 

15.  Page  50.    He  was  born  24th  June,  1532  or  1538. — Adlard,  p.  16. 

16.  Page  50.  His  'will,  dated  15th  June,  1549,  and  proved  at 
Norwich  2nd  May,  1554,  is  in  the  Registry  at  Norwich  {Wilkins,  fo.  255). 
His  eldest  son  was  Thomas  Walpole,  who  died  before  his  father,  leaving 
behind  him  two  sons,  Henry  and  John.  Henry  died  under  age,  as 
appears  by  his  mother's  will,  which  was  proved  in  P.C.C. ,  26th  January, 
1579-80  {Arundel,  fo.  3).  She  married  twice  after  her  first  husband, 
Thomas  Walpole's  death,  first  to  Thomas  Fleet  of  Whaplode,  co.  Line, 
Gent.,  and  second  to  —  Horden  of  Camberwell,  whom  also  she  survived. 
Her  second  son,  John,  inherited  the  Lincolnshire  estates,  and  at  his 
death  they  were  sold  in  obedience  to  his  will,  P.C.C,  13th  October, 
1590  {Driiry,  fo.  62),  of  which  we  shall  hear  more  hereafter.  The  great 
bulk  of  the  Lincolnshire  property  was  left  to  Christopher  Walpole  to 
enjoy  till  such  time  as  his  nephew  Henry,  or,  in  the  event  of  his  death, 
till  his  nephew  John  should  have  arrived  at  the  age  of  twenty-six  years. 
Christopher  Walpole  must  have  had  the  usufruct  of  the  property 
for  at  least  twenty  years.  The  fourth  son,  Francis,  i.s.,  the  third 
alive  at  the  death  of  Henry  Walpole  of  Herpley,  appears  to  have  died 
early. 

17.  Page  50.  See  Dugdale's  Origines  Juridicce,  ch.  xlviii.  The 
account  is  too  long  to  give  in  extenso  here,  but  will  well  repay  perusal 
by  those  who  have  access  to  the  book.  The  sum  total  of  the  expenses 
incurred  by  the  incoming  Serjeants  amounted  to  the  enormous  sum  of 
^667  7s.  7d.,  which  represents  at  least  £5,000  at  the  present  time.     The 


6o  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

feast  was  held  in  the  Inner  Temple  Hall,  on  the  16th  October,  1555. 
In  the  "Bury  Wills"  (Camden  Society,  1850)  there  is  an  inventory  of 
the  goods  of  Margaret  Bagster  of  Hunden,  with  the  date  14th  October, 
1521,  whereby  it  appears  that  even  thus  early  Mr.  Walpole  was  in 
practice,  and  had  already  learnt  the  art  of  getting  fees  out  of  his  clients. 
Serjeant  Walpole's  coat  of  arms  was  to  be  seen  in  the  large  semicircular 
window  of  Gray's  Inn  Hall  in  Dugdale's  time  ;  and  also  in  one  of  the 
windows  of  the  Refectory  of  Serjeants'  Inn  in  1599,  but  it  had  disappeared 
from  the  latter  place  in  1660.— Dugdale.tt.s.  (ed.  1671),  pp.  302,  320,  321. 

18.  Fage  50.  He  had  before  his  death  immensely  increased  his 
landed  property.  He  is  owner  of  manors  in  Wymbottsham,  Great  and 
Little  Massingham,  Hillington,  Congham,  Depdale,  and  elsewhere,  and 
of  lands  and  houses  all  over  the  county  of  Norfolk,  but  principally  in 
the  north.  His  p.m.  inquisition  is  a  long  document — Chancery,  Norf. 
5  and  6  Philip  and  Mary.  His  will  is  at  Somerset  House. — P.C.C. 
Reg.  Moody,  fo.  6.  His  executors  are  Martin  Hastings,  Esq.,  Henry 
Spelman,  Gent.,  Robert  Coke,  Gent.,  Geffrey  Cobbe,  Christopher 
Walpole,  and  Thomas  Scarlett. 

19.  Page  51.  The  extracts  from  the  parish  register  of  Docking  will 
be  found  later  on. 

20.  Page  51.  Blomefield,  viii.  395.  By  a  curious  chance  the  original 
Sheriff's  order  for  the  surrender  of  a  portion  of  the  Anmer  estate 
(Blomefield,  u.s.  334)  came  into  my  possession  with  a  parcel  of  similar 
documents  some  years  ago.  They  were  bought  for  me  at  a  sale  in 
London. 

21.  Page  52.  The  Walpoles  had  some  salt  works  at  Walpole, 
which  appear  to  have  been  of  some  importance,  as  they  are  frequently 
mentioned  in  the  wills  and  inquisitions  of  members  of  the  family,  in  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries. 

Strype,  in  his  Memorials  of  Archbishop  Parker  (i,  p.  408),  writes  as 
follows  : — '*  This  year  (1565)  was  a  project  for  salt  works  in  Kent  set  on 
foot  by  several  persons  of  quality;  one  whereof  was  the  Earl  of  Pembroke, 
and  amongst  the  rest  the  Secretary  Cecil  and  the  Queen  herself.  .  .  .  He 
[Abp.  Parker]  told  Secretary  Cecil  that  he  doubted  not  but  that  they  had 
well  considered  the  likelihood  of  the  matter,  wishing  it  good  success, 
better  than  he  kneiv  the  like  to  take  place  about  thirty  years  past  in  his 
county,  about  Walsingham  side.  From  whence  came  to  Norwich  by  cart 
great  plenty.  So  that  the  price  of  the  bushel  fell  from  sixteenpence  to  six- 
pence. But  after  experience,  they  ceased  of  their  bringing,  and  fell  to  their 
old  salt  again,  three  pecks  whereof  went  further  than  a  bushel  of  that  white, 
fair,  fine  salt.'' 

For  an  agreement  between  the  Knights  and  Burgesses  of  Norfolk  and 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  6i 


Thomas  Walker  as  to  white  salt,  1586,  see  Historical  MSS,  Commission, 
4th  Keport,  p.  224. 

22.  Pa(]c  52.  See  the  very  interesting  collections  published  by 
Mr.  W.  B.  Rye,  entitled  England  as  seen  by  Foreigners,  4to,  Lond.  1865, 
pp.  70,  110,  and  especially  the  note  on  p.  196.  In  the  Household  Books 
of  the  L'Estranges  of  Hunstanton  I  find,  under  the  year  1519,  an  account 
for  Liveries  of  thirteen  servants.  In  1530  there  is  another  account  for 
wages  paid  to  sixteen  servants.— ^rc/i(^oZor/ia,  vol.  xxv.  pp.  424  and  493. 
Hunstanton  Hall  appears  by  these  Household  Books  to  have  been  as 
full  of  visitors  for  the  greater  part  of  the  year  as  a  large  hotel.  A  regular 
list  of  "  Strangers"  was  kept,  and  their  names  appear  duly  recorded. 
The  house  steward  apologises  for  the  largeness  of  his  weekly  bills  in  a 
somewhat  plaintive  strain,  but  modern  housekeepers  would  be  glad 
indeed  if  they  could  keep  their  expenses  down  to  the  sixteenth-century 
figures.  Take  the  following  as  an  example.  It  is  actually  the  largest 
weekly  bill  at  Hunstanton  in  the  year  1533. 

*'  The  xx''^  Weke.     Straungers  in  the  same  weke. 
"  Mestrys  Cobe  &  hyr  syster,  w^  other  off  the  ciitreye,  and  so 
the  sm  of  thys  weke  besyde  gyste  &  store         .         .        xxviijs.  ijd." 

23.  Page  53.  The  following  from  Harrison's  Preface  to  Holinshed^s 
Chronicle  (1577)  is  quoted  in  a  note  (p.  103)  in  Miss  Sneyd's  transla- 
tion of  A  Relation  of  the  Island  of  England,  published  by  the  Camden 
Society  in  1847.  "  There  are  olde  men  yet  dwelling  in  the  village  where 
I  remayne,  who  have  noted  some  things  to  be  marvellously  altered  in 
Englande  within  their  sound  remembrance.  One  is  the  great  amend- 
ment of  lodging  :  for,  sayde  they,  our  fathers  and  we  ourselves  have  lyen 
full  ofte  upon  straw  pallettes  covered  only  with  a  sheete  under  coverlettes 
made  of  dogsicain  or  hop  harlots  [I  use  their  own  terms]  and  a  good 
round  logge  under  their  heads  insteade  of  a  bolster.  If  it  were  so  that 
our  fathers  or  the  good  man  of  the  house  had  a  materes  or  flockbed,  and 
thereto  a  sacke  of  chafe  to  rest  hys  heade  upon,  he  thought  himself e 
to  be  as  well  lodged  as  the  lord  of  the  towne,  so  well  were  they  con- 
tented. Pillows  were  thought  mete  only  for  women  in  childbed.  As 
for  servants,  if  they  had  any  shete  above  them,  it  was  well,  for  seldom 
had  they  any  under  their  bodies,  to  keepe  them  from  the  pricking  straices, 
that  ranne  oft  thorow  the  canvas  and  razed  their  hardened  hides."  But 
see  Mr.  Furnival's  "Forewords"  to  the  Babee's  Book,  E.E.T.S.  1868, 
p.  64  et  seq. 

24.  Page  53.  The  Great  Bustard  continued  to  haunt  this  part  of 
Norfolk  till  last  century.  Mr.  H.  Stevenson,  an  authority  on  all  matters 
of  ornithology,  assures  me  that  "the  last  Great  Bustard  killed  in  Norfolk, 
and  the  last  of  the  local  race,  was  a  female,  shot  at  Lexham  in  May  1838, 
another  having  been  killed  at  Dbrsingham  in  January  of  the  same  year. 


62     ONE  GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE 

The  extinction  of  the  bustard  in  Great  Britain  dates  from  1838."  See 
Mr.  Stevenson's  Bird^  of  Norfolk,  vol.  ii.  pp.  1-42,  for  a  complete  and 
interesting  discussion  of  this  subject. 

25.  Page  53,    Blomefield,  vii.  155. 

26.  Page  53.  His  name  may  be  seen  in  the  Lists  of  Admissions  of 
Gray's  Inn,  1521-1677.— if arZeian  HISS.  No.  1912.  Students  entered  at 
the  "  Inns  "  much  earlier  in  those  days  than  now. 

27.  Page  53.  Entries  of  Preferments  and  Sales  of  Wards,  from 
1  Mary  to  1  Elizabeth,  Com.  Norff.,  Philip  and  Mary,  3  and  4— P.R.O. 
This  document  sells  the  wardship  to  his  mother.  By  the  Lit.  Pat., 
dated  30th  October,  2  Elizabeth,  Court  of  Wards,  it  is  assigned  to  Rob. 
CooKE,  Esq.,  and  Thos.  Scarlett,  Gent.  An  allowance,  which  was  then 
liberal,  is  made  for  his  education. 


CHAPTER  II. 

SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE  DAYS. 

When  Queen  Elizabeth  came  to  the  throne  there  was  only 
one  Grammar  School  in  the  county  of  Norfolk,  that,  viz., 
which  her  father  had  intended  to  found,  and  which  her 
brother  actuafly  did  found,  in  the  city  of  Norwich.^  When 
the  free  chapels  were  "  suppressed,"  the  chapel  of  St.  John 
the  Evangelist,  in  the  precincts  of  the  Cathedral  Close, 
with  the  houses  and  premises  thereto  belonging,  were 
granted  to  Sir  Ed.  Warner,  Knight,  and  Eichard  Catline, 
Gent.,  who  sold  their  rights  to  the  Mayor  and  Commonalty 
of  the  city  of  Norwich.^  Here  the  newly  estabHshed 
Grammar  School  was  intended  to  be  carried  on,  and 
probably  was  carried  on  in  a  languid,  careless  manner. 
The  citizens  appear  to  have  been  far  more  anxious  to 
make  the  most  of  their  Hospital  Charter  in  the  way  of 
patronage  and  doles  than  to  use  any  portion  of  its  revenues 
to  secure  to  themselves  a  really  efficient  school,  and,  as 
the  natural  consequence  of  this  policy,  one  of  the  first 
things  we  hear  of  is  that  when  a  Grammar  School  was  set 
up  at  Yarmouth,  in  1551,  the  corporation  of  that  town 
found  no  difficulty  in  inducing  "  Mr.  Hall,  grammarian  of 
Norwich,"  to  leave  his  post  and  to  remove  to  a  better-paid 
mastership  at  the  more  attractive  seaport.3  The  school 
would  seem  to  have  been  closed  for  the  next  year  or  two ; 
but  in  the  third  year  of  Queen  Mary,  "at  an  assembly 
holden  and  kept  within  the  Guildhall,"  ^  John  Bukke,  B.A., 
was  appointed  master  of  the  Grammar  School  of  the  city, 
and  under  him  appears  to  have  been  an  usher  or  sub- 
master,   one   Henry   Bird,  who,  whaftever   became   of  his 

63 


64  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

chief,  continued  to  discharge  his  duties  as  master  during 
the  whole  of  Mary's  reign ;  s  but  the  school  was  evidently 
starved  by  the  city  magnates,  and  the  buildings  were 
allowed  to  fall  into  decay.  With  the  accession  of  Matthew 
Parker  to  the  Primacy,  a  better  day  dawned.  Mr.  Walter 
Haugh,  or  Haw^e,  a  member  of  Archbishop  Parker's  own 
college,  and  a  Master  of  Arts  of  eight  years'  standing,  was 
appointed  to  the  head-mastership,  and  a  subscription  was 
raised  among  the  leading  citizens  and  some  of  the  county 
gentry  to  put  the  place  into  complete  repair.^  The  school 
soon  became  famous,  and  among  its  earliest  scholars  was 
one  who  was  destined  to  play  an  important  part  hereafter 
in  the  politics  of  England,  and  to  earn  from  posterity  the 
reputation  of  having  been  one  of  the  ablest  judges  that  ever 
sat  upon  the  bench,  and  perhaps  the  profoundest  lawyer  of 
his  time.  Edward  Coke,  the  future  Chief-Justice  of  the 
Common  Pleas,  was  for  seven  years  a  boy  at  Norwich 
School,  and  left  it  for  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  in 
September  1567.7  Nor  was  he  the  only  boy  at  Norwich 
at  this  time  who  afterwards  attained  to  some  celebrity  : 
Nicholas  Faunt  ^  was  there,  who  is  said  to  have  brought 
to  England  the  first  news  of  the  St.  Bartholomew  massacre, 
and  who,  as  secretary  to  Sir  Francis  Walsingham,  was 
familiar  with  all  the  intrigues  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  court ; 
and  Eobert  Naunton,9  author  of  the  famous  Fragmenta 
Regalia^  a  work  which,  as  a  wise  and  sagacious  critique 
upon  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  by  one  who  knew  personally 
all  the  actors  in  the  drama,  stands  alone  in  English 
literature.  Contemporary,  too,  with  these,  but  a  very 
different  notable,  was  the  riotous  and  profligate  Eobert 
Greene,  that  audacious  and  prolific  genius  who  even 
presumed  to  regard  Shakspere  as  a  rival  dramatist. ^° 

Among  others  who  sent  their  sons  to  Norwich  School  at 
this  time  were  Christopher  Walpole  of  Docking  and  John 
Walpole  of  Houghton.  In  the  brief  account  which  both 
one  and  the  other  give  to  themselves  when  they  entered  the 
Novitiate  at  Tournay  many  years  after,  each  speaks  of 
himself  as  having  been  brought  up  in  grammar  and  the 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  65 


liter (R  Immaniorcs  "  in  patria,"  "  i.e.,  in  his  own  county — 
Edward  says,  for  four  years  ;  Henry,  aliq^iamdiu,  i.e.,  for 
some  considerable  time.  Henry  Walpole  probably  entered 
at  the  school  in  1566  or  1567,  for  in  those  days  boys  were 
sent  to  the  grammar  schools  at  seven  years  of  age.  His 
first  master  was  Mr.  Hawe,  who  has  been  mentioned  above, 
who  died  in  1569,  and  was  buried  in  Norwich  Cathedral. '^ 
To  him  succeeded  a  scholar  of  some  eminence  in  his  day, 
one  Stephen  Limbert,  of  Magdalen  College,  Cambridge. 
Magdalen  College  at  this  time  was  presided  over  by  Eoger 
Kelke,  a  leading  spirit  among  the  Puritan  faction,  then  very 
strong  at  the  university. ^3  Limbert  had  followed  in  the 
master's  steps,  and  was  ready  and  eager  to  show  himself 
no  half-hearted  disciple.  In  the  year  1565  a  violent  agita- 
tion had  been  raised  in  the  university  against  the  wearing 
of  the  surplice  or  any  academical  or  ecclesiastical  habit,  and 
the  feeling  against  everything  that  approximated  to  Komish 
fashions  in  garb  or  ritual  had  displayed  itself  in  more  than 
one  noisy  and  extravagant  outbreak.  This  feeling  Limbert 
had  brought  with  him  from  Cambridge  to  Norwich  ;  and  as 
he  had  probably  witnessed  the  great  surplice  riot  in  the 
university,  so  he  was  quite  prepared  to  join  in  a  similar 
protest  against  vestments,  or  stained  glass,  or  organ  music 
at  Norwich,  if  the  opportunity  presented  itself.  In  the 
very  year  he  came  to  Norwich  there  had  been  a  violent 
anti-ritual  demonstration  in  the  Cathedral,  headed  hy  five 
of  the  prebendaries  "and  others  with  them";  who,  in  the 
absence  of  the  dean,  but  apparently  with  something  like 
connivance  on  the  bishop's  part,  thought  proper  to  march 
in  a  kind  of  procession  into  the  choir,  and,  after  committing 
various  unseemly  outrages,  ended  by  breaking  down  the 
organ  and  doing  their  best  to  stop  the  continuance  of  the 
choral  service.  The  bishop  would  have  been  glad  enough  to 
pass  over  the  affair,  disgraceful  as  it  was,  without  notice, 
but  when  the  news  of  these  proceedings  came  to  the  ears  of 
the  Queen  she  was  extremely  indignant,  and  wrote  a  very 
severe  letter  of  censure  upon  the  bishop  for  his  negligence, 
and  ordered    the    offenders   to   appear  before   Archbishop 

5 


66  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

Parker  and  give  account  of  themselves  for  their  evil 
behaviour.  No  harm,  however,  seems  to  have  come  upon 
any  of  the  parties  concerned,  and  it  is  to  be  presumed  that 
the  organ  was  repaired,  and  that  things  went  on  pretty  much 
as  before. ^4  But  not  many  days  after  Henry  Walpole  left 
Norwich  School,  previous  to  his  entry  at  Cambridge,  a 
second  riot  occurred,  and  this  time  we  read  that  "  Innova- 
tion was  suddenly  brought  about  into  the  Cathedral  ...  at 
evening  service  ...  by  Limhcrt,  Chapman,  and  Boberts,  then 
of  this  church.  These,  in  the  time  of  reading  the  lessons, 
had  inveighed  against  the  manner  of  the  singing  them,  and 
termed  it  disordered,  and  wished  it  utterly  thence  to  be 
banished.  And  one  of  them  starting  up  at  that  time,  took 
upon  him  to  use  another  and  a  neio  form  of  service,  contrary 
to  that  ordered  by  her  Majesty  and  the  book."  By  this 
time  one  at  least  of  the  previous  malcontents  had  learned 
his  lesson  :  Dr.  Gardiner,  though  he  had  been  at  the  head  of 
the  former  disturbance,  had  now  succeeded  to  the  deanery, 
and  was  not  without  hopes  of  even  greater  preferment,  for 
Parkhurst  was  reported  to  be  in  declining  health,  the 
bishopric  might  fall  vacant  any  day,  and  the  dean  was  too 
shrewd  a  courtier  not  to  have  an  eye  to  his  own  interest. 
Accordingly  he  "  stood  up  and  confuted  the  reasons  the 
others  had  brought,"  and  even  committed  one  of  the 
offenders  to  prison  ;  but  with  characteristic  astuteness  he 
managed  to  insinuate  that  some  of  the  blame  of  these 
mutinous  irregularities  rested  upon  the  bishop,  through 
whose  laxity  mainly  such  things  had  come  to  pass.^s  One 
would  have  supposed  that  such  indecent  violence  would 
have  been  visited  with  severe  censure  and  punishment. 
But  no !  the  rioters  were  mildly  reproved  and  warned 
against  any  repetition  of  such  a  scandal ;  and  there  the 
matter  seems  to  have  ended,  and  the  bishop,  if  he  called  the 
offenders  to  account,  seems  to  have  troubled  them  no  more. 
Dr.  John  Parkhurst,  who  was  at  this  time  Bishop  of 
Norwich,  had  been  a  fellow  of  Merton  and  tutor  of  Bishop 
Jewell.  '*  Better  for  poetry  and  oratory  than  divinity," 
says   Wood.     He   had   put   forth   in   youth   a    volume    of 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  67 

Latin  verse  which  he  republished  in  his  later  years,  though 
the  critics  said  there  were  in  those  poems  things  that  were 
at  least  unseemly.  In  Queen  Mary's  time  he  joined  the 
exodus,  and  crossed  the  sea ;  and  he  appears  to  have 
suffered  more  privations  than  some  others  of  the  fugitives. 
In  Switzerland  he  was  highly  esteemed  and  held  in  honour 
for  his  learning  and  piety.  He  had  settled  at  Zurich,  not 
Geneva,  and  henceforth  Zurich  and  its  ecclesiastical  con- 
stitution were  very  dear  to  his  heart.  As  firm  and  resolute 
as  any  man  in  his  opposition  to  Eomanism,  Zuinglius, 
and  not  John  Calvin,  was  his  master  and  pattern,  and 
his  rule  he  would  have  been  glad  to  carry  out  in  his 
own  diocese.  ^^ 

Dr.  Gardiner's  predecessor  in  the  Deanery  was  John 
Salisbury,  a  man  of  learning  and  some  mark.  He  had 
been  a  student  at  both  universities,  and  a  Benedictine 
monk  at  Bury  St.  Edmunds.  Here  he  incurred  the 
suspicion  of  heresy,  and  for  some  years  was  kept  under 
restraint  in  the  abbey  by  order  of  Cardinal  Wolsey. 
Henry  VIII.  appointed  him  Prior  of  the  monastery  of  St. 
Faith  at  Horsham,  near  Norwich,  and  subsequently,  in 
1536,  Suffragan  Bishop  of  Thetford.  In  1537  we  find 
him  Archdeacon  of  Anglesey ;  in  1538,  a  Canon  of  Norwich 
Cathedral ;  next  year  he  was  installed  Dean.  His  deanery 
he  continued  to  hold,  with  the  archdeaconry  and  other 
rich  preferments,  till  the  accession  of  Queen  Mary,  when 
he  was  deprived  for  being  married.*  At  the  accession  of 
Queen  Elizabeth  he  was  restored.  About  the  year  1565 
he  preached  a  sermon  in  Norwich  Cathedral  which  created 
at  the  time  a  great  sensation,  and  so  much  provoked  the 
gentry  of  the  county  that  he  was  accused  of  favouring 
the  old  religion,  and  was  for  a  time  suspended  once  more 
from  his  deanery.  He  managed  to  defeat  the  machinations 
of  his  enemies,  and  in  1571  received  a  dispensation  from 
Archbishop  Parker  to  hold  the  bishopric  of  Sodor  and 
Man,    the    Deanery    of    Norwich,    the    Archdeaconry    of 

*  His   daughter  Jane  was  christened  at  St.  Michael's-at-plea,  21st 
July,  1549. 


68  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

Anglesey,  and  the  Eectories  of  Thorpe-super-Montem  in 
the  Diocese  of  Lincoln,  and  of  Diss  in  the  Diocese  of 
Norwich,  all  which  he  seems  to  have  retained  till  his 
death/7 

There  were  six  canons  or  prebendaries  belonging  to  the 
Cathedral  Chapter  at  this  time.  Of  these,  Edmund 
Chapman  was  apparently  the  most  pronounced  as  a  zealous 
Puritan  of  the  advanced  iconoclastic  school.  He  appears 
as  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  riot  in  the  Cathedral  in 
1570  and  again  in  1575,  and  his  irrepressible  tempera- 
ment made  him  a  somewhat  troublesome  personage  to  the 
authorities.  At  last  his  erratic  and  defiant  habits,  and 
his  reluctance  to  submit  to  any  discipline,  could  no  longer 
be  borne,  and  he  was  deprived  of  his  canonry  for  non- 
conformity in  1576.  Bishop  Aylmer,  when  compelled  to 
proceed  against  him,  was  inclined  to  show  him  great 
leniency,  and  suggested  that  he  should  be  sent  to  some 
remote  part  of  the  kingdom,  where  he  might  be  kept  from 
doing  much  harm,  and  be,  possibly,  employed  in  doing 
some  good  as  a  preacher  against  Popery. ^^ 

Thomas  Fowle,  another  of  the  prebendaries,  was  im- 
plicated in  the  same  disturbances  with  Chapman.  He 
too  was  a  vehement  Puritan,  and  when,  in  1572,  a 
commission  was  issued  for  proceeding  against  the  popish 
recusants  in  Norfolk,  his  name  was  put  upon  the  com- 
mission as  that  of  a  man  who  was  not  likely  to  spare 
the  recalcitrant  gentry. ^9 

Entirely  of  the  same  mind,  and  quite  as  conspicuous 
as  the  other  members  of  the  chapter  on  the  occasion  of 
the  first  riot,  was  Dr.  John  Walker,  a  somewhat  famous 
preacher  among  the  Puritan  clergy  of  the  time.  He  too 
got  into  trouble  in  the  sequel  for  non-conformity,  but 
nevertheless  was  rewarded  with  substantial  preferment, 
and  when  the  farce  of  a  conference  with  Campion  was 
carried  out  in  1580  he  was  one  of  those  who  took  a 
leading  part  in  the  discussion.^^ 

The  last  of  that  band  of  zealots  was  George  Gardiner, 
a  pluralist  among  pluralists  even  in  those  days.     He  had 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  69 


been  a  fellow  of  Queens'  College,  Cambridge,  and  it  was 
alleged  that  in  Queen  Mary's  time  he  had  been  conspicuous 
as  a  persecutor  of  the  gospellers  in  Cambridge.  Whether 
it  was  so  or  not,  he  showed  no  sign  of  any  Eomish 
tendencies  from  the  time  he  became  a  Minor  Canon  of 
Norwich  Cathedral  in  1561,  till  his  death  as  Dean  in  1589. 
He  appears  never  to  have  lost  an  opportunity  for  advancing 
himself  and  his  own  interest,  and  held  at  various  times 
no  less  than  fourteen  pieces  of  preferment :  at  his  death 
he  was  Dean,  Chancellor,  and  Archdeacon  of  Norwich, 
and  Eector  of  Ashill,  Blofield,  and  Forncett,  besides  holding 
one  or  two  other  benefices  scarcely  less  valuable.^' 

Only  two  more  of  the  Canons  of  Norwich  remain  to 
be  mentioned,  Nicholas  Wendon  and  Thomas  Smith,  who 
held  their  stalls  for  ten  years,  but  were  deprived  at  last, 
when  it  was  found  that  iliey  were  both  laymen  !  ^^ 

Thus  a  schoolboy  at  Norwich  in  these  times  was  of 
necessity  reared  in  a  very  heated  atmosphere.  If  daily 
and  hourly  tirades  against  the  Pope  and  Babylon  could 
make  a  lad  a  sound  Protestant,  few  schoolboys  in  England 
could  have  been  in  a  more  favourable  position  for  arriving 
at  such  a  frame  of  mind.  Unfortunately  there  is  in  some 
boys'  nature  a  certain  perversity  of  will  which  leads  them 
to  revolt  from  influences  forced  upon  them  too  obtrusively  ; 
and  when  a  youth  is  subjected  to  a  hard  and  repressive 
discipline  23 — never  cheered  by  a  gleam  of  sympathy  or 
softened  by  a  word  of  tenderness — a  time  is  apt  to  come 
when  he  turns  out  a  stubborn  rebel,  and  the  reaction 
from  habitual  submission  sets  in  at  last  in  a  form  which 
his  elders  least  desire  to  see,  and  are  least  prepared  to 
expect. 

Moreover,  though  bishop,  and  dean,  and  chapter,  and 
schoolmaster  were  all  of  one  mind,  it  must  not  be 
supposed  that  there  was  no  minority  who — "  popishly 
inclined" — were  sulkily  and  obstinately  clinging  to  their 
own  opinions  with  a  troublesome  and  uncompromising 
tenacity.  The  Norfolk  gentry  were  almost  unanimous  in 
their  dislike  of  Puritanism.     The  conflict  with  Rome  in  the 


70  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

latter  half  of  the  sixteenth  century  was  a  war  of  classes ; 
it  was  almost  precisely  of  the  same  character  as  the  conflict 
with  the  Crown  became  a  century  later.  In  both  cases, 
speaking  generally,  the  "  optimates "  were  on  one  side, 
the  "  plebeians  "  on  the  other,  and  the  smouldering  jealousy 
of  class  against  class  displayed  itself  at  times  in  other 
than  religious  bickerings.  Very  significant  is  the  story 
of  that  mad  conspiracy  of  sundry  of  the  gentlemen  of  the 
county  and  others  in  the  year  1570,  which  had  for  its 
object  the  forcible  expulsion  of  the  strangers  in  Norwich 
"  from  the  city  and  the  realm,"  and  which  ended  in  the 
indictment  of  ten  of  these  gentlemen  for  high  treason, 
three  of  whom  were  hung,  drawn,  and  quartered,  and 
the  rest  kept  in  jail,  with  the  forfeiture  of  their  goods 
and  lands,  for  life. ^4  The  gentry  of  England  were  at  this 
time  almost  a  caste ;  not  a  whit  less  arrogant,  haughty, 
and  overbearing  because  they  must  have  known  that  their 
order  had  been  fearfully  broken  in  upon  of  late,  and  knew, 
only  too  well,  that  they  were  poorer  and  weaker  than 
their  sires. 

It  must  be  remembered,  too,  that  though  the  towns 
had  preachers  enough  and  to  spare,  and  though  the  town 
churches  were  served  by  a  ministry  some  of  whom  were 
men  of  eloquence,  zeal,  and  power,  whose  earnestness 
was  patent  and  their  piety  sincere  and  glowing;  yet  in 
the  country  villages,  and  among  the  agricultural  population, 
far  out  of  the  reach  of  the  pulpit  agitators,  the  tidings 
that  came  at  times  of  all  this  turmoil  of  religious  excite- 
ment only  served  to  perplex  and  amaze.  To  the  villager 
it  seemed  as  if  chaos  had  come  again.  The  townsmen 
were  going  on  too  fast  for  the  "lobs  of  the  country." 
How  could  these  latter  unlearn  the  lessons  of  their  youth 
so  easily  ?  The  quick-witted  citizen  looked  down  with 
contemptuous  pity  at  the  slow-thinking  rustic  and  the 
heavy  squire,  and  these  returned  the  sneer  with  a  sullen 
scowl  of  their  own.  What  had  all  these  changes  of  the 
last  twenty  years  done  for  tJiem  ?  What  were  they  likely 
to  do  ?     When  King  Edward  died,  the  county  clergy  had 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  Jt 

been  turned  out  of  their  Norfolk  livings  by  hundreds. ^s 
"When  Queen  Mary  died,  the  Marian  priests  forsook  their 
cures  in  shoals.  What  would  be  the  next  thing  ?  There 
had  been  no  peace  since  the  old  order  had  changed.  How 
pressing  the  need  of  new  clergy  was  is  plain  from  the 
fact  that  the  very  week  after  Archbishop  Parker's  con- 
secration he  ordained  twenty-two  priests  and  deacons  at 
Lambeth,  '^^  and  two  months  afterwards  no  less  than  one 
hundred  and  fifty-five  at  a  single  ordination.  It  was  made 
a  matter  of  special  provision  that  the  newly  ordained  clergy 
should  be  required  to  serve  more  than  one  cure.^7  A 
new  order  was  instituted,  that  of  "  Eeaders,"  who  were 
only  allowed  to  read  the  service,  but  forbidden  to  preach 
or  even  administer  the  sacrament  of  Baptism ;  but  these 
men  were  a  miserable  makeshift,  and  upon  trial  the  newly 
ordained  clergy,  as  a  rule,  were  found  deplorably  wanting. 
Very  soon  it  became  necessary  to  address  to  the  bishops 
a  letter  forbidding  them  to  ordain  any  more  mechanics,  and 
the  Ecclesiastical  Commissioners  put  forth  certain  Articles 
to  enforce  at  any  rate  the  semblance  of  discipline,  and, 
among  other  things,  "  abstinence  from  mechanical  sciences  " 
was  enjoined  "  as  well  to  ministers  as  to  readers." 

But  not  only  was  the  religious  destitution  of  the  country 
parishes  patent  and  deplorable,  but  to  earnest  and  thought- 
ful men  in  the  large  towns  things  were  not  at  all  as 
they  should  be.  To  a  lad  of  any  refinement  of  feeling 
and  reverence  for  the  sacred  associations  of  the  past 
there  must  have  been  something  very  shocking  in  all  this 
organ-breaking  and  glass-smashing.  "Was  it  likely  that 
men  whose  zeal  burst  forth  in  these  vulgar  and  passionate 
outbreaks  would  be  likely  to  command  the  respect  and 
esteem  of  the  gentler  and  more  affectionate  among  the 
rising  generation?  They  too  had  their  fund  of  en- 
thusiasm. How  if  that  enthusiasm  should  find  vent  for 
itself  in  quite  other  expressions  than  those  in  which  the 
passions  of  the  mob  were  now  exhausting  themselves  ? 
How  if  these  coarse  excesses  of  the  dominant  faction 
should  defeat   their   own  object  and  make  many  a  young 


72  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

man  begin  to  think  that  there  might  be  worse  things 
even  than  "  monkery  " — that  a  sour  "  presbyter  "  was, 
after  all,  but  the  "priest  writ  large,"  and  that  it  was 
quite  possible  to  conceive  a  tyranny  more  galling  and 
odious  even  than  that  of  the  Pope  of  Rome? 

Meanwhile  there  were  other  scenes  which  a  schoolboy 
must  have  witnessed  in  those  days  which  were  not 
calculated  to  make  him  feel  at  ease.  At  Norwich  itself, 
religious  fanaticism  in  every  form  was  rampant.  Upwards 
of  4,000  Flemings  had  their  own  peculiar  worship,  their 
sects,  their  "  views,"  their  broils,  almost  their  faction- 
fights  ;  crazy  prophets  rose  up  in  the  streets,  claiming  to 
be  inspired;  "Anabaptists"  propounded  new  theories  of 
the  rights  of  property,  and  even  were  for  introducing  a 
reformed  code  of  morals.  Whispers  were  heard  of  a  real 
new  revelation,  whose  apostle  or  high  priest  none  could 
name,  whose  adherents  called  themselves  by  a  strange  title, 
to  be  heard  of  by  and  by  often  enough  when  David  George's 
rhapsodies  should  have  become  translated  into  English 
jargon,  and  when  the  "  family  of  love  "  should  have  had 
its  martyrs  and  confessors  who  suffered  they  scarce  knew 
why.23 

In  the  face  of  all  this  wild  confusion,  it  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at  if  there  was  a  party  in  England  who  had  no 
love  for  the  new  learning, — a  party,  too,  that,  in  the  upper 
ranks  of  English  society,  was  rather  increasing  in  weight, 
influence,  and  numbers,  though  the  "  great  middle  class," 
the  tradesmen  and  the  "common  people,"  were  all  on  the 
other  side. 

Looking  at  the  matter  from  our  present  point  of  view, 
we  are  too  ready  to  regard  the  excommunication  of 
Elizabeth  as  nothing  but  a  stupendous  blunder.  It  was 
a  blunder  because  it  failed ;  but  to  the  statesmen  of  that 
day,  to  those  who  were  not  the  least  sagacious  and  far- 
sighted  of  their  generatiou,  the  issuing  of  the  Bull  seemed  a 
very  bold  and  skilful  move,  which  called  for  the  utmost 
determination,  promptitude,  and  resolve  to  meet  it.  To 
them  it  was  nothing  less  than  the  menace  of  a  new  crusade, 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  73 

and  a  call  to  the  territorial  aristocracy  of  this  country  to 
join  in  a  holy  league,  not  only  for  the  restoration  of  the 
faith  but  for  the  reconstitution  of  society.  What  the 
enormous  power  of  the  sovereign  had  done  in  Spain,  what 
the  noblesse  with  the  Guises  at  their  head  seemed  in  a  fair 
way  of  doing  in  France,  that  the  papal  advisers  believed 
might  be  effected  by  the  gentry  of  England.  A  counter 
reformation  which  should  end  in  stamping  out  heresy  was 
regarded  as  a  consummation  not  only  devoutly  to  be 
wished  but  even  likely  to  be  achieved.  How  much  the 
Bartholomew  massacre,  following  so  close  as  it  did  upon 
the  promulgation  of  the  Bull,  contributed  to  strengthen 
the  hands  of  the  English  government,  it  would  be  difficult 
to  say.  Certainly,  when  the  penal  laws  were  enacted,  they 
were  directed  against  the  gentry  almost  exclusively ;  fines 
and  forfeiture  of  goods  were  terrible  only  for  those  who  had 
something  to  lose,  and  it  soon  became  a  point  of  honour 
with  the  squirearchy  to  stand  up  for  the  old  religion,  and 
to  throw  in  their  lot  with  the  gentlemanly  sufferers  for 
conscience'  sake ;  the  "  good  old  Tories  "  of  this  time  clung 
stubbornly  to  the  past,  and  would  not  accept  the  logic  of 
facts ;  but  the  gauntlet  which  the  Pope  threw  down  was 
taken  up  with  a  grim  satisfaction  by  the  Queen  and  her 
council,  and  from  henceforth  there  was  no  hesitation  and 
no  mercy. 

Had  there  been  no  provocation  ?  Was  there  not  a 
cause  ?  Assuredly  there  was.  Iti  is  not  for  a  wise  man 
to  defend  the  one  side  or  the  other,  least  of  all  to  defend 
the  audacious  and  irritating  aggressions  which  made  the 
conflict  an  absolute  necessity  and  compromise  impossible. 
But  now  that  that  struggle  may  be  said  to  be  practically 
at  an  end, — at  any  rate  so  far  at  an  end  that  the  political 
ascendancy  of  the  Papacy  over  this  country  at  any  future 
time  is  simply  inconceivable, — it  may  be  well  to  remind 
readers  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  there  were  two  sides 
in  Queen  Elizabeth's  days,  and  that  for  young  men  of 
enthusiastic  temperament  and  chivalrous  nature,  for  men 
who  instinctively  chose  the  weaker  side  and  threw  in  their 


74  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

lot  with  the  persecuted  rather  than  the  persecutors,  there 
would  be  an  absolute  fascination  in  the  creed  that 
seemed  to  them  to  be  now  remorselessly  assailed,  and  a 
vehement  opposition  arose  to  the  statesmanship  which 
had  perhaps  been  driven,  and  at  any  rate  seemed  pledged, 
to  a  war  of  extermination. 

•  •  •  •  • 

At  last  the  schooldays  came  to  an  end,  and  on  the 
15th  of  January,  1575,  Henry  Walpole  matriculated  at 
Cambridge.  He  entered  at  St.  Peter's  College,  at  that  time 
presided  over  by  Dr.  Andrew  Perne. 

Dr.  Perne  was  a  Norfolk  man,  and  his  family  were 
possessed  of  some  landed  property  at  Pudding  Norton,  not 
far  from  Houghton.  He  was  notorious  through  life  as  a 
trimmer,  whose  astute  accommodation  of  himself  to  the 
prevailing  winds  and  currents  of  opinion  had  made  his 
name  proverbial  among  the  wits  of  the  time.^9  In  King 
Henry's  days  he  had  been  preferred  to  the  rich  living  of 
Walpole  St.  Peter,  and  to  that  of  Pulham,  in  his  native 
county.  As  one  of  Edward  VI. 's  chaplains  he  was 
appointed  to  preach  the  doctrines  of  the  Eeformation 
through  the  remote  parts  of  the  kingdom.  He  signed 
without  a  murmur  the  Catholic  Articles  of  Queen  Mary  in 
1555,  and  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  of  Elizabeth  in  1562 ; 
in  1573  he  preached  at  Norwich  against  the  Puritaus,  and 
in  1580  he  was  engaged  in  a  conference  with  Feckenham, 
Abbot  of  Westminster,  at  Wisbech.  Witty,  genial,  urbane, 
and  learned,  he  had  a  rare  faculty  of  being  able  to  carry 
off  his  frequent  tergiversations  with  a  grace  and  courtesy 
which  any  diplomatist  might  envy,  and  which  actually 
gained  him  a  certain  measure  of  confidence  from  both  sides. 
A  latitudinarian  who  professed  to  see  the  good  in  everything, 
he  could  tolerate  Papist  and  Puritan  alike.  He  could  even 
make  some  efforts  to  abate  the  violence  of  the  persecutor's 
zeal  and  to  moderate  the  rancour  of  polemics.  His  college 
appears  to  have  been  the  natural  place  of  resort  for  extreme 
men,  who  might  count  on  the  protection  of  the  master's 
broad  shield  so  long  as  his  own  interests  and  prospects  were 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  75 

not  compromised.  He  would  certainly  "  leave  his  men 
alone,"  and  would  not  worry  them  by  too  prying  scrutiny, 
or  harass  them  with  too  strict  a  discipline ;  and  the  college 
throve  as  the  master  prospered.s^ 

On  the  same  day  that  Henry  Walpole  entered  at  Peter- 
house,  another  young  man  of  diametrically  opposite 
proclivities  was  admitted  at  the  same  college.  Dudley 
Fenner  was  the  eldest  son  of  a  Kentish  gentleman,  and 
heir  to  a  large  estate  ;  he  was  almost  exactly  of  the  same 
age  as  his  fellow-collegian,  and  the  subsequent  career  of  the 
two  men  offers  some  remarkable  parallels.  Fenner  was 
from  the  outset  a  rigid  and  fervent  Puritan ;  Walpole,  as 
earnest  and  devoted  a  Catholic.  Fenner  was  suspected  of 
being  concerned  in  the  Marprelate  books  ;  Walpole  certainly 
had  a  hand  in  Parsons'  writings.  Neither  proceeded  to  a 
degree  at  the  university,  both  being  deterred  by  the  tests 
and  engagements  which  every  graduate  was  compelled  to 
submit  to.  Fenner  appears  to  have  exercised  his  ministry 
at  Cranbrook  in  Kent,  in  1583,  and  to  have  been  then 
married.3i  Both  were  driven  into  exile  for  conscience' 
sake  ;  both  were  imprisoned  ;  both  exercised  their  several 
ministries  in  Belgium,  the  one  as  a  Puritan  preacher,  the 
other  as  a  Jesuit  priest ;  both  were  for  a  time  employed  in 
the  same  town  of  Antwerp,  at  no  very  long  interval ;  and 
when  Dudley  Fenner  lay  upon  his  deathbed  at  Middleburg 
in  the  winter  of  1589,  Henry  Walpole  was  lying  in  prison 
at  Flushing,  scarcely  five  miles  off,  in  hourly  peril  of  losing 
his  life  too  as  an  exile  in  a  foreign  land.  How  little  could 
either  of  these  young  men  have  guessed  what  was  in  store 
for  them  as  they  attended  the  same  lectures,  dined  in  the 
same  hall, — both  of  them,  too,  for  different  reasons  shirking 
the  same  "  chapels,"  and,  doubtless,  fiercely  arguing  w^ith 
one  another  on  the  profoundest  points  of  controversy,  for 
which  they  were  both  in  the  sequel  to  suffer  so  cruelly, 
and  to  labour  so  long  ! 

Among  the  Ordinances  drawn  up  by  Archbishop  Parker 
for  Norwich  School,  special  provision  was  made  for  the 
teaching  of  Greek.32     It  is  almost  incredible  how  few  at 


76  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

Cambridge  even  professed  a  knowledge  of  the  language  or 
literature  of  Hellas.  Baker  tells  us  that  at  this  time  no 
more  than  two  fellows  of  St.  John's  were  "  Grecians  "  ;  and 
it  is  pretty  certain  that  almost  as  few  knew  anything  about 
it  as  now  do  of  Sanscrit.33  But  at  Peterhouse  Charles 
Home,  who  was  elected  to  a  fellowship  in  Henry  Walpole's 
second  year,  was  a  distinguished  Grecian,  and  doubtless 
gave  lectures  in  the  college.  There,  too,  was  Eichard 
Bainbrigg,  the  antiquary,  already  making  collections,  and 
Degory  Nichols,  a  divine,  who  scandalised  people  by  his 
gay  attire — "too  fine  for  scholars."  The  two  Bacons  were 
fellow-commoners  at  Trinity — Anthony  and  Francis  the 
great ;  while  at  Pembroke,  across  the  street,  so  near  that  a 
child  might  toss  a  biscuit  from  one  college  to  the  other, 
Spenser,  by  this  time  an  M.A.,  whom  the  undergraduates 
would  regard  with  some  little  awe,  was  writing  his  Shepherd's 
Calendar,  Kirke  and  Gabriel  Harvey  already  reeognising  in 
him  a  poet  for  the  ages. 

A  year  after  Henry  Walpole  entered  at  St.  Peter's,  his 
cousin  Edward  matriculated  at  the  same  college,  and  along 
with  him  came  four  more  of  their  kindred  or  close  neigh- 
bours— Edward  Yelverton  of  Eougham,  one  of  the  Cobbes 
of  Sandringham,  Philip  Paris  of  Pudding  Norton,  and 
Barclay  (otherwise  Bernard)  Gardiner  of  Coxford  Abbey. 
Of  these  young  men  now  studying  together  at  the  same 
college,  three  were  to  become  eventually  members  of  the 
Society  of  Jesus,  and  another,  Edward  Yelverton,  was 
destined  to  suffer  through  all  his  life  for  his  obstinate 
adherence  to  the  Romish  cause. 34 

This  is  not  the  place  to  dwell  upon  the  subject  of 
Cambridge  studies  during  the  period  we  are  engaged  with, 
the  less  so  as  neither  Henry  nor  Edward  Walpole  proceeded 
to  any  degree  at  the  university.  That  both  young  men 
were  diligent  students  seems  clear  from  the  facility  with 
which  they  obtained  admission  to  the  Society  of  Jesus,  and 
we  are  expressly  told  that  Henry  Walpole  was  regarded 
as  a  man  of  learning  and  promise  when  he  first  presented 
himself  at  the  College  of  Bheims.35     His  name  appears  on 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  77 

the  buttery  books  of  Peterhouse  for  the  last  time  on  the 
17th  April,  1579.  He  had  already  been  entered  at  Gray's 
Inn  the  year  before. 3^'  His  university  residence  had  come 
to  an  end,  and  it  remained  for  him  now  to  qualify  himself 
for  a  career  at  the  bar.  Whether  Edward  Walpole  remained 
behind  at  Cambridge,  or  had  already  left  the  university,  we 
cannot  tell. 


NOTES   TO   CHAPTER  II. 

1.  Page  63.  The  Charter  of  Edward  VI.  was  first  printed  in  Burton's 
Antiquitates  Capellcc  D.  Johannis  EvangelistcB  hodie  Scholce  Regicc  Norvi- 
censis,  which  was  pubHshed  among  Sir  Thomas  Browne's  posthumous 
works.  The  stipend  of  the  head-master  was  at  first  £10  a  year,  with 
a  house  free  of  all  charges  ;  the  stipend  of  the  usher  was  £6  13s.  4d., 
with  a  house.  The  head-master's  stipend  was  doubled  in  1562,  and 
again  doubled  in  1610.  It  continued  to  be  £40  a  year  till  Mr.  Lovering's 
appointment  in  1636,  when  the  head-master  received  £50  a  year  and 
a  house,  the  usher  £30  and  no  house.  Burton's  work  was  reprinted 
with  some  additions  in  1862  by  the  late  John  Longe,  Esq.,  of  Spixworth 
Park. 

2.  Page  63.  See  Blomefield,  iv.  59.  Burton  has  printed  the  Award 
upon  the  dispute  between  the  Dean  and  Chapter  and  the  Corporation, 
which  Blomefield  refers  to. 

3.  Page  63.  Manship's  History  of  Yarmouth,  vol.  i.  p.  232.  He 
seems  to  be  identical  with  the  Walter  Haugh  mentioned  below.  He 
stayed  only  two  years  at  Yarmouth. 

4.  Page  63.  The  document  is  preserved  among  the  Miscellaneous 
Deeds  and  Documents,  in  the  archives  of  the  Corporation  of  Norwich. 
Already  the  city  magnates  had  begun  to  evade  the  conditions  of  their 
Charter  by  dividing  the  schoolhouse  between  the  head-master  and  his 
usher,  though  they  were  bound  to  provide  a  house  for  each  of  them. 
" .  .  .  .  And  also  we  do  give,  grant,  and  confirm  to  the  said  John 
Bukke  for  the  exercising  of  the  said  office  of  Schoolmaster  all  that  the 
crypt  of  the  late  Chapel  and  house  of  St.  John  within  the  precincts  of 
the  Cathedral  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinty  of  Norwich,  and  all  those 
houses,  buildings,  outer  yards,  and  gardens  whatsoever,  being  occupied 
or  used  as  part  or  parcel  of  the  said  soil  of  the  said  Chapel  or  Charnel 
House.  .  .  .  Except  and  ahoays  reserved  within  the  foresaid  charnel  or 
house  a  sufficient  habitation  and  dwelling  for  such  person  as  now  is  or 
any  time  hereafter  shall  be  Usher  of  the  same  school  for  the  time  being 
to  live  and  inhabit  in.^^ 

5.  Page  64.  Strype  prints  from  the  Baker  MSS.  a  highly  interesting 
paper,  of  which  a  copy  is  to  be  found  in  the  Registry  at  Norwich. 
"  Articles  to  be  inquired  of  in  the  Metropolitical  Visitation  of  the  most 
reverend  Father  in  God,  Matthew,  by  the  providence  of  God,  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  ...  in  all  and  singular  cathedral  and  collegiate  churches 
within  his  province  of  Canterbury."  The  replies  for  Norwich  were  sent 
in  by  Mr.  George  Gardiner,  then  one  of  the  prebendaries,  and  disclose 

78 


ONE   GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE    79 

a  deplorable  state  of  affairs.  In  reply  to  the  question,  "  Whether  your 
grammar  school  be  well  ordered  ?  &c." — a  question  which  assumed  that 
every  cathedral  chapter  was  expected  to  maintain  a  grammar  school — 
Gardiner  says,  "...  this  respondent  saith,  that  there  is  no  grammar 
school  at  all  within  their  house,  saving  that,  as  he  saith,  they  allow 
XX  marks  by  year  to  one  Mr.  Bird  who  teacheth  a  grammar  school 
in  the  city,  and  receiveth  such  scholars  as  they  send  him,  of  which 
he  knoweth  not  one,  as  he  saith.  And  the  whole  order  of  the  school 
is  left  to  Mr.  Bird's  discretion,  which  he  thinketh  to  be  well  done, 
as  he  saith  ;  and  believeth  that  he  bringeth  up  them  that  are  under  him 
in  the  fear  of  God." — Strype,  Parker,  B.  iii.  No.  54.  This  paper  belongs 
to  the  spring  of  1567.  Five  years  after  this  Mr.  Bird  was  associated 
with  Sir  Nicholas  Bacon,  the  Bishop  of  Norwich,  Thomas  Lord  Went- 
worth,  and  some  of  the  most  considerable  people  of  the  county,  in 
a  commission  for  examining  suspected  Papists.  When  Dean  Salisbury 
died  in  1573,  "  great  suit  was  made  "  to  get  the  deanery  for  Mr.  Bird, 
and  we  read  that  "  the  city  of  Norwich  had  written  up  for  one  Mr. 
Bird,  a  very  godly  man,  and  well-learned."  Mr.  Gardiner,  however, 
obtained  the  preferment. 

6.  Page  64.  See  Blomefield,  iv.  60.  There  is  a  fuller  account  of 
the  restoration  in  Burton's  Ajitiquitates .  Some  of  the  stained  glass 
still  remained  in  the  windows  on  the  north  side  as  late  as  Blomefield's 
time  (1744).  In  the  archives  of  the  city  in  the  Guildhall  I  came  upon 
a  memorandum,  dated  24th  September,  1747,  of  some  dispute  between 
the  Corporation  and  Mr.  Kedington,  the  head-master  of  the  school 
at  that  time,  in  which  it  is  said,  "  Corporation  have  repaired  the  glass 
in  the  windows,  lohich  are  frequently  broke  by  the  scholars,  and  are 
expensive.^' 

7.  Page  64.  His  father,  Kobert  Coke  of  Mileham,  was  one  of  Serjeant 
Walpole's  executors. — See  n.  18,  chap.  i. 

8.  Page  64.  He  was  probably  a  son  of  Robert  Fonde  or  Faunt,  who 
was  Vicar  of  Kimberley  in  1569.  He  matriculated  at  Caius  College, 
Cambridge,  in  June  1572.  There  are  several  letters  of  his  in  Birch's 
Elizabeth. — See  Cooper's  Athena  Cant. 

9.  Page  64.  Sir  Robert  Naunton  set  up  a  monument  to  his  old  school- 
master (Limbert)  at  Norwich,  with  an  inscription  upon  a  brass  plate 
(which  existed  in  Blomefield's  time),  when  he  was  already  advanced 
in  life.     This  was  after  he  was  knighted  in  1615. 

10.  Page  64.  There  is  a  complete  list  of  Greene's  Works  in  Cooper's 
Athence  Cant.,  where,  too,  may  be  found  the  best  account  of  him. 

11.  Page  65.  The  Album  of  the  Tournai  Noviciate  is  now  in  the 
Royal  Library  at    Brussels    {MS.  No.   1016).    I  have  printed    Henry 


8o  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

Walpole's  account  of  himself  written  with  his  own  hand,  *'  Circa 
Natalem  Dni.  A°.  1591,"  in  the  Walpole  Letters,  4to,  Norwich,  1873. 
Edward's  autobiography  given  in  the  same  MS.  will  be  found  infra. 

12.  Page  65.  The  inscription  upon  his  monument  in  the  cathedral 
is  given  by  Blomefield,  iv.  62.  He  entered  at  Corpus  Christi  College, 
Cambridge,  in  1552,  having  probably  been  elected  to  a  scholarship  from 
some  other  college.  He  graduated  B.A.  in  1554.  Master's  History  of 
Corpus,  by  Lamb. 

13.  Page  65.  See  Cooper's  AnnaU  of  Cambridge,  vol.  ii.  p.  218  et  seq., 
and  Baker's  History  of  St.  John's  College,  edited  by  Prof.  Mayor,  vol. 
i.  p.  162.  Baker's  brief  account  of  the  condition  of  St.  John's  at  this 
time  is  long  enough  to  convince  us  of  the  degradation  of  the  college. 
Prof.  Mayor  has  collected  the  notices  of  the  Surplice  Feuds  and  other 
disorders  of  the  time  in  the  exhaustive  way  which  is  characteristic 
of  all  his  work. — (Vol.  ii.  p.  586  et  seq.) 

Stephen  Limbert  was  entered  as  a  sizar  at  Magdalen  College, 
Cambridge,  12th  November,  1561.  On  the  death  of  Mr.  Haugh  he 
succeeded  to  the  head-mastership  of  Norwich.  He  married  Katherine 
Sutton  of  Frettenham  on  the  27th  April,  1573  (P.R.),  and  by  her  had 
a  family  of  ten  children,  whose  baptisms  are  recorded  in  the  register 
of  St.  Mary  in  the  Marsh,  Norwich,  where  also  we  find  the  entry 
of  his  burial,  10th  October,  1598.  Cooper  {Athena  Cantab.),  led  astray 
by  a  misprint  in  Blomefield,  asserts  that  he  was  a  master  at  Norwich 
in  1555,  which  is  certainly  incorrect.  In  the  MSS.  of  the  University 
Library  at  Cambridge  there  is  a  mysterious  letter  of  his  addressed 
to  Bishop  Parkhurst,  proving  him  to  have  been  on  intimate  terms 
with  the  Bishop ;  but  he  appears  never  to  have  taken  Orders,  which 
accounts  for  his  not  getting  preferment.  In  Whitney's  Emblems,  4to, 
Leyden,  1580,  there  are  some  verses  addressed  to  him  by  the  author, 
and  some  prefatory  verses  by  Limbert.  When  Elizabeth  came  to 
Norwich  in  1578,  Limbert  was  very  graciously  received  by  the  Queen, 
to  whom  he  was  deputed  to  make  a  Latin  speech.  It  is  printed  in 
Blomefield,  and  is  a  pedantic  and  pretentious  harangue.  Sir  Robert 
Na^unton's  monument  to  Limbert  has  disappeared. 

14.  Page  66.  Strype,  Parker,  ii.  36.  This  first  riot  took  place  about 
the  middle  of  September  1570.  The  letter  of  Queen  Elizabeth  to  Bishop 
Parkhurst  on  the  subject  is  dated  25th  September,  1570. — F.B,.0.  Domestic, 
Eliz.,  vol.  Ixxiii.  n.  68.  For  an  official  account  of  the  state  of  affairs 
at  Norwich  in  1562,  see  Eastern  Counties  Collectanea,  p.  67. 

15.  Page  66.  Strype's  Annals,  II.  i.  485.  The  Limbert  riot  occurred 
some  time  in  January.  Parkhurst  died  2nd  February,  1574-5.  It  is 
evident  that  Bp.  Freake  lost  very  little  time,  after  his  appointment 
to  the  See  of  Norwich,  in  attempting  to  reform  his  diocese,  and  that 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  8i 

he  carried  things  with  a  high  hand.  Among  Lord  Calthorpe's  MSS.  (vol. 
ex.  fo.  133)  there  is  a  curious  "  Petition  of  certain  aggrieved  ministers  " 
at  Norwich,  who  protest  against  slanders,  defaming  them  as  schismatics 
and  on  their  part  denouncing  Jesuits  {five  years  before  any  Jesuit  had 
ever  set  foot  in  England),  Anabaptists,  Libertines,  Family  of  Love, 
&c.  "...  And  if  the  Bishop  proceed  to  urge  them  as  he  hath  begun, 
surely  it  will  bring  a  wonderful  ruin  to  this  Church  here  in  Norwich 
and  round  about.  There  be  already  xv  or  xx  godly  exercises  of  preaching 
or  catechising  put  down  in  this  city  by  the  displacing  of  three  preachers. 
.  .  ."  The  document  is  dated  25th  September,  1576.  Freake  was  elected 
Bishop  of  Norwich,  15th  July,  1575.  His  election  was  not  confirmed 
till  the  14th  November,  Bishop  Freake  had  been  an  Augustinian  monk 
at  Waltham  Abbey,  and  was  one  of  those  who  received  a  pension  of 
£5  a  year. 

16.  Page  67.  Wood,  Athen.  Oxon.  ed.  Bliss,  vol.  i.  412.  Strype's 
Annals,  II.  i.  425.  Archbishop  Parker  evidently  had  but  a  mean  opinion 
of  Parkhurst,  and  a  tone  of  something  like  contempt  is  observable  in  his 
letters  to  him.  Bishop  Parkhurst  had  incurred  the  suspicion  "  even 
of  the  best  sort  for  his  remissness  in  ordering  his  clergy  "  as  early  as 
1561.  See  a  letter  of  Cecil  in  the  Parker  Correspondence,  p.  149. — 
(Parker  Soc.) 

17.  Page  68.  Wood's  Athence  Oxon.  ii.  808 ;  Cooper's  Athena  Cant. 
i.  318;  Strype,  Parker,  ii.  80. 

18.  Page  68.  Cooper,  Athence  Cant.  i.  382  ;  Strype,  Aylmer,  p.  36. 
He  appears  to  have  been  deprived  of  his  stall  at  Norwich  in  1576,  for 
Launcelot  Thexton  succeeded  in  February  1576-7. — Le  Neve,  Fasti, 
He  became  Lecturer  at  Dedham,  where  he  died,  aetat.  64,  in  1602,  and 
where  a  monument  exists  to  his  memory. 

19.  Page  68.  He  was  a  Fellow  of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge, 
and  appears  to  have  obtained  his  stall  at  Norwich  through  Sir  Nicholas 
Bacon.  He  had  hardly  been  installed  before  an  attempt  was  made 
to  induce  him  to  resign  in  favour  of  John  Foxe  the  Martyrologist.  This 
he  declined  to  do,  and  he  held  his  canonry  till  1581.  Strype,  Annals, 
I.  ii.  44  ;  and  Cooper's  Atli.  Cant.  i.  452. 

20.  Page  68.  He  became  eventually  Prebendary  of  St.  Paul's.  There 
is  much  about  him  in  Strype's  Parker.  See,  too.  Cooper,  Ath.  Cant. 
vol.  ii.  p.  37. 

21.  Page  69.  Cooper's  Atli.  Cant.  ii.  55.  He  obtained  the  Deanery 
by  the  intercession  of  Robert  Earl  of  Leicester. — Strype,  Annals,  II. 
i.  448.  Archbishop  Parker  tried  to  get  the  Deanery  for  his  chaplain, 
Mr.  Still,  but  in  vain. — Parker  Correspondence,  p.  451. 

6 


82  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

22.  Tage  69.  Parker  gives  a  deplorable  account  of  the  state  of 
the  Norwich  Chapter,  and,  indeed,  of  the  whole  of  the  diocese,  in  a 
letter  to  Lady  Bacon,  dated  6th  February,  1567-8. — Correspondence, 
p.  311.  Five  years  afterwards  he  again  speaks  with  some  bitterness 
on  the  same  subject:  "the  church  is  miserable,"  he  says.  In  the 
former  letter  Parker  relates  his  interview  with  Smith,  whom  he  advised 
to  resign  his  stall  or  take  Orders.  Smith  declined  to  do  either  the  one 
or  the  other.  Nicholas  Wendon,  besides  being  a  canon  of  Norwich,  was 
actually  Archdeacon  of  Suffolk  and  Eector  of  Witnesham.  In  1576  he 
became  a  professed  Romanist,  was  ordained  priest  23rd  February,  1578 
(Douay  Diary,  pp.  8,  26,  301,  360),  and  slipped  away  to  the  Continent, 
where  he  probably  ended  his  career. — Le  Neve's  Fasti;  Cooper's  Athencs 
Cant.  i.  384 ;  Strype's  Parker,  iii.  159.  In  Theiner's  Annals,  iii.  608, 
there  is  a  letter  from  the  Archbishop  of  Glasgow  to  the  Cardinal  of  Como, 
March  1584,  recommending  Wendon,  who  was  about  to  go  to  Rome 
to  ask  for  the  restoration  of  his  pension  which  had  been  withdrawn 
from  him. 

Among  other  laymen  holding  cathedral  preferment  were  Thomas 
Cromwell,  Dean  of  Wells,  and  Sir  John  Chepe,  Canon  of  Christ  Church, 
Oxford  (Historical  MSS.  Commission,  10th  Report,  p.  729;  and  see 
Swainson's  Chichester,  p.  116). 

23.  Page  69.  How  cruel  and  pitiless  the  treatment  of  schoolboys  was 
at  this  time  is  abundantly  proved  by  such  a  weight  of  evidence  as  would 
be  wearisome  to  the  reader  even  to  refer  to.  Roger  Ascham's  Scole 
master  and  Brindley's  Grammar  School  may  be  regarded  as  protests 
against  the  brutality  of  the  sixteenth-century  pedagogues. 

24.  Page  10.  Blomefield's  Norfolk,  iii.  284;  P.R.O.,  Domestic,  Eliz., 
vol.  Ixxi.  Nos.  60,  61,  62,  and  vol.  Ixxiii.  No.  28 ;  Eastern  Counties 
Collectanea,  p.  208  ;  Wright's  Queen  Elizabeth  and  her  Times,  i.  p.  372. 

25.  Page  71.  I  have  gone  carefully  through  the  Bishop's  Register  for 
the  Diocese  of  Norwich  for  the  year  ending  25th  March,  1554,  and  I  find 
no  fewer  than  two  hundred  and  twenty-eight  new  incumbents  presented 
in  the  twelve  months  to  benefices  in  the  County  of  Norfolk  alone.  Only 
twenty-six  of  these  were  occasioned  by  the  death  of  the  previous  holders 
of  the  livings.  This  subject  requires  a  more  thorough  examination  than 
it  has  yet  received.  I  conjecture  that  in  many  instances  the  monks  dis- 
possessed by  Henry  VIII.  were  presented  to  benefices  by  Queen  Mary. 

26.  Page  71.  Strype's  Parker,  i.  229.  Strype  {Aylmer,  p.  21)  says, 
"  Many  of  the  old  Incumbents  (1577)  and  Curates  were  such  as  were 
fitter  to  sport  with  the  timbrel  and  pipe  than  to  take  in  their  hands  the 
book  of  the  Lord."  Grindal  ordained  nearly  ninety  persons  in  1559. — 
Strype's  Grindal,  p.  53.     See,  too,  Annals,  I.  i.  233. 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  83 

27.  Page  71.     Strype,  Annals,  I.  i.  265;  Parker,  i.  180,  194  ;  ii.  80. 

28.  Page  72.  Froude,  Hist.  England,  x.  p.  112  ;  Blomefield,  iii.  364  ; 
Parker  Correspondence,  p.  247 ;  Fuller,  Church  History,  B.  ix.  s.  ii.  §  10. 
See  especially  his  account  of  the  Familists,  s.  iii.  §  36.  "  These  Familists 
(besides  many  monstrosities  they  maintained  about  their  communion 
with  God)  attenuated  all  Scriptures  into  allegories ;  and,  under  pretence 
to  turn  them  into  spirit,  made  them  airy,  empty,  nothing.  They 
counterfeited  revelations ;  and  those,  not  explicatory  or  applicatory  of 
Scripture  (such  may  and  must  be  allowed  to  God's  servants  in  all  ages), 
but  additional  thereunto  and  of  equal  necessity  and  infallibility  to  be 
believed  therewith.  In  a  word,  as  in  the  small-pox  (pardon  my  plain 
and  homely,  but  true  and  proper,  comparison),  when  at  first  they  kindly 
come  forth,  every  one  of  them  may  severally  and  distinctly  be  discerned ; 
but  when  once  they  run  and  matter,  they  break  one  into  another,  and 
can  no  longer  be  dividedly  discovered  ;  so  though  at  first  there  was  a  real 
difference  betwixt  Familists,  Enthusiasts,  Antinomians  (not  to  add  high- 
flown  Anabaptists),  in  their  opinions,  yet  (process  of  time  plucking  up 
the  pales  betwixt  them)  afterwards  they  did  so  interfere  amongst  them- 
selves, that  it  is  almost  impossible  to  bank  and  bound  their  several 
absurdities,"  Strype  {Parker,  ii.  69,  and  Annals,  II.  i.  487)  gives  a 
good  account  of  the  Brownists  and  their  eccentric  founder.  Fuller,  u.s. 
B,  ix.  sect.  vi.  §  3,  says,  "For  my  own  part  (whose  nativity  Providence 
placed  within  a  mile  of  this  Brown's  charge  [i.e.,  benefice] ),  I  have  when 
a  youth  often  beheld  him."  He  proceeds  to  tell  a  story  of  his  having 
been  carried  to  jail  at  Northampton,  where  he  died,  in  a  "cart  with  a 
feather  bed  provided  to  carry  him."  His  offence  was  an  assault  upon 
a  rate  collector. — Cf.,  too,  Annals,  II.  i.  483. 

There  is  a  long  and  curious  account  of  the  Brownists  in  Ephraim 
Pagitt's  Heresiography ;  or,  a  Description  and  History  of  the  Heretics 
and  Sectaries  sprung  up  in  these  times.  London,  1661.  Hanbury  gives 
nearly  twenty  pages  to  Browne  and  his  doctrines.  Historical  Memorials 
relating  to  the  Independents,  vol.  i.  p.  19  et  seq. 

29.  Page  74.  ''Jack.  What  Doctor  Pearne?  Why,  he  is  the 
notablest  turncoat  in  all  this  land,  there  is  none  comparable  to  him. 
Why,  every  boy  hath  him  in  his  mouth  ;  for  it  is  made  a  proverb,  both 
of  old  and  young,  that  if  one  have  a  coat  or  cloak  that  is  turned  they  say 
it  is  Pearned.^^  From  "  A  Dialogue,  wherein  is  plainly  laide  open,  the 
tyrannical  dealing  of  the  Lord  Bishop  against  God's  children,"  &c. 
This  is  one  of  the  Marprelate  Tracts,  and  was  originally  published  in 
1589,  and  "Keprinted  in  the  time  of  the  Parliament,"  1640. 

30.  Page  75.     There  is  an  exhaustive  account  of  him  in  Cooper's 


84     ONE  GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE 

AthencB  Cant.    In   1573  there  were  sixty  pensioners  at  St.  Peter's. — 
Cooper,  Annals,  ii.  315. 

31.  Page  75.  See  Bardsley's  Curiosities  of  Puritan  Nomenclature, 
p.  124. 

32.  Page  75.  I  discovered  these  "  ordinances  "  in  the  archives  of  the 
city  of  Norwich,  and  transcribed  them  in  1862.  They  are  too  long  to 
reprint  here.  The  Greek  authors  appointed  to  be  read  are  Lucian^s 
Dialogues,  Hesiod,  Homer,  and  Euripides,  and  the  head-master  is 
required  to  see  that  the  boys  of  the  sixth  form  "  attain  to  some  com- 
petent knowledge  of  the  Greek  tongue." 

33.  Page  76.  See  Baker's  History  of  St.  John's,  by  Prof.  Mayor,  pp.  171 
and  180,  and  the  notes  on  the  last  passage,  p.  598. 

34.  Page   76.     I   am   indebted  to  the  Kegistrar  of   the  , University, 
Rev.    H.  R.  Luard,  for  permission  to  search   the  documents   in  his 
custody,  and  to  make  the  necessary  extracts  from  them.     I  find  that 
in  the  January  of  1579-80  the  following,  among  others,  were  admitted 
to  the  B.A.  degree,  and  I  give  the  names  here  because  they  will  occur 
again  in  the  course  of  my  narrative.     Edward  Yelverton  (of  Rougham, 
CO.  Norfolk) ;  Robert  Remington  (whom  Henry  Walpole  calls  his  tutor) ; 
Miles  Sands  (who  took  part  in  the  disputation  at  York,  1594) ;  George 
Stransham  {alias  Potter,  who  subsequently  became  a  Catholic   priest 
and  got  into  trouble) ;  Arthur  Daubeny  (of  Sharington,  mentioned  by 
H.   Walpole  in   his  examination) ;  Philip   Paris  (of   Pudding  Norton, 
a  Recusant) ;  John  Cobbe  (of  Sandringham). 

Edward  Walpole  matriculated  as  of  St.  Peter's  in  May  1576. 
Dudley  Fenner  was  a  Fellow  Commoner  of  the  college.  Bartley  [sic] 
Gardiner  matriculated  as  a  pensioner  in  March,  1577-8. 

35.  Page  76.  1582,  7°  die  Julii.  Ex  Anglia  ad  nos  venit  D.  Hen. 
Walpoole,  disertus  gravis  et  plus.    Douay  Diary. 

36.  Page  77.  I  have  to  thank  the  Rev.  J.  Porter,  now  Master  of 
St.  Peter's,  for  this  information,  taken  from  the  Books  of  the  College. 
The  entry  of  Henry  Walpole  at  Gray's  Inn  is  to  be  found  in  Harl.  MSS., 
1912  (Lists  of  Admissions  of  Gray's  Inn,  1521-1677). 


CHAPTER   III 

THE     EXCOMMUNICATION    AND    ITS     RESULTS 

*'  We  must  now  take,  and  that  of  truth,  into  observation,  that  until 
the  tenth  of  her  reign,  her  times  were  calm  and  serene,  though  some- 
times a  little  overcast,  as  the  most  glorious  sunrisings  are  subject  to 
shadowings  and  droppings  in :  for  the  clouds  of  Spain  and  vapours 
of  the  Holy  League  began  then  to  disperse  and  threaten  her  serenity.  .  .  . 
For  the  name  of  Recusant  began  then,  and  first  to  be  known  to  the 
world  ;  and  till  then  the  Catholics  were  no  more  than  church  Papists, 
but  were  commanded  by  the  Pope's  express  letters  to  appear,  and 
forbear  church  going  as  they  tended  their  Holy  Father,  and  the  Holy 
Catholic  church   their  mother."  .  .  . — Naunton's  Fragmenta  Regalia. 

Hitherto  our  attention  has  been  mainly  given  to  such 
incidents  as  may  be  supposed  to  exercise  a  direct 
influence  upon  the  development  of  a  thoughtful  and 
intelligent  lad,  born  into  the  world  with  a  certain  bias 
of  his  own,  and  some  of  that  spirit  of  unrest  and  melan- 
choly and  discontent  which  leads  a  man  to  the  conviction 
that  the  times  in  which  he  lives  are  ''  out  of  joint,"  and 
urges  him  passionately  to  set  them  straight  again.  But 
our  characters  are  not  formed  only  by  the  direct  influences 
which  are  brought  to  bear  upon  them,  nor  our  opinions 
adopted  only  from  the  things  we  see  with  our  own  eyes  and 
hear  with  our  own  ears.  Eather  is  it  the  indirect  influence 
of  events  which  are  going  on  around  us  in  that  outer  circle 
with  which  we  have  no  personal  contact,  that  affects  us  most 
profoundly  in  the  period  when  boyhood  is  passing  into  man- 
hood. And,  therefore,  if  we  would  understand  the  error  or 
the  heroism,  the  weakness  or  the  nobleness,  the  fervour  or 
the  infatuation  of  such  a  life  as  we  are  engaged  in  reviewing, 
it  is  essential   that  we   should   endeavour   to  estimate  the 

85 


86  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

significance  of  those  larger  questions  and  those  more 
stirring  events  which  were  agitating  the  minds  of  men 
during  these  eventful  times. 

•  •••««• 

The  year  1569  is  a  memorable  one  in  the  history  of 
Queen  Elizabeth's  reign.  Mary  Stuart  was  a  prisoner  in 
England,  and  on  her  as  the  next  heir  to  the  throne  the 
eyes  of  all  politicians  turned.  Should  any  one  of  those 
numberless  chances  occur  to  which  we  are  all  liable, — 
and  to  which  in  times  of  great  excitement  and  uneasiness 
men  are  apt  to  believe  that  sovereigns  must  be  peculiarly 
liable, — the  Queen  of  Scots,  it  was  thought,  would  certainly 
ascend  the  English  throne,  and  as  certainly  attempt  to 
bring  back  the  days  of  the  Papal  dominion,  and  the  doctrine 
and  ritual  of  Eome. 

In  the  northern  counties  of  England,  more  than  any- 
where else,  the  great  bulk  of  the  population  were  averse 
to  the  Protestant  faith,  and  almost  all  the  more  powerful 
families  were  vehemently  and  conscientiously  in  favour 
of  the  mass  as  against  the  new  doctrines  which  were 
being  slowly  but  steadily  forced  upon  them.  In  the  temper 
of  men's  minds  at  this  time  it  needed  very  little  to  stir 
them  up  to  deeds  of  violence,  and  it  was  almost  inevitable 
that  sooner  or  later  the  long-suppressed  but  widely 
fermenting  discontent  should  prove  altogether  irrepres- 
sible, and  passion  grown  reckless  should  drive  on  angry 
people  to  defy  the  terrors  of  the  law.  In  November  of 
this  year,  1569,  the  Northern  Eebellion  blazed  forth  under 
the  leadership  of  the  Earls  of  Northumberland  and  West- 
morland.^ By  Christmas  it  had  run  its  course,  had 
collapsed,  and  the  vengeance  had  begun.  Whoever  likes 
may  read  the  account  of  that  atrocious  massacre,  for  it 
deserves  no  better  name,  as  it  is  set  down  in  the  pages 
of  Mr.  Froude's  work ;  and  he  will  scarcely  think  the 
historian  has  been  too  severe  upon  his  heroine  when  he 
tells  us  that  "  retribution  inflicted  upon  the  northern 
insurgents  shows  undoubtedly  that  anger  and  avarice  had 
for  a  time  overclouded  Elizabeth's  character.'' 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  87 

There  can  be  no  question  that  the  Northern  Kebellion 
was  a  rehgious  war.  As  an  attempt  to  restore  the  old  order 
of  things,  or  to  put  the  CathoUc  party  in  a  better  position, 
the  revolt  of  the  northern  earls  was  an  utter  failure  ;  but 
its  effects  did  not  soon  pass  away.  There  was  deep 
discontent  and  horror  :  the  "  Mass  Priests  "  were  among 
the  sufferers,  upon  whom  signal  severity  appears  to  have 
been  exercised,  and  the  lower  orders  were  remorselessly 
butchered,  but  the  gentry's  lives  loere  spared  that  their 
lands  7night  be  forfeited.  A  host  of  high-born  paupers 
were  thus  thrown  upon  the  resources  of  their  relatives 
and  friends  :  discontent  smouldered,  but  it  did  not  die. 

While  "  the  hanging  business  went  on,"  and  Sir  George 
Bowes  was   "  stringing  them  leisurely  upon  the   trees   in 
the   towns   and   village    greens,"    the    Queen   herself   was 
being    tried    in    the    Papal    Court    at    Eome    on    certain 
grave  charges  affecting  her  right   to  retain  possession  of 
her  kingdom  and  her  crown.     Twelve  Englishmen,  exiles 
for  their  religion,    were  examined  as  witnesses,  and  their 
depositions  taken  in  due  form.     The   court  considered  its 
verdict,   and  finally  decided   that  the   Queen   was   guilty, 
and   had  incurred  the  canonical   penalties  of  heresy.     On 
the  25th  February,  1570,  the  sentence  was  pronounced,  and 
the  Bull  of  Pope  Pius  V.,  called  "  Begnans  in  Excclsis," 
was  signed,  and  launched  forth  on  its  disastrous  mission. 
On  the  15th  May,  when  quiet  people  rose  in  the  morning 
to  pursue  their  ordinary  duties,  lo  !  nailed  to  the  door  of 
the  Bishop  of  London's  Palace  appeared  a  strange  docu- 
ment— it   was   the    Papal    Bull    declaring    the    Queen    of 
England    excommunicated,    "  deprived    of    all    dominion, 
dignity,   and   privilege   whatsoever,"   and  her  subjects  not 
only  absolved  from  all   oath   of   allegiance,  but  forbidden 
to  render  to  her  any  homage  or  obedience !  ^ 

Only  they  who  have  little  or  no  acquaintance  with 
the  conflict  of  sentiment  and  opinion  raging  in  England 
during  Elizabeth's  reign  will  commit  the  error  of  suppos- 
ing that  the  Excommunication  was  an  event  of  trifling 
importance.      The   truth   is,   it   was   the   turning-point   in 


88  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

the  history  of  the  Reformation.  Hitherto  it  had  been 
possible  for  "good  CathoHcs "  to  keep  up  some  sort  of 
conformity,  and  to  bow  in  the  house  of  Rimmon,  in  the 
hope  of  some  turn  in  affairs ;  now  they  were  placed  between 
two  fires.  The  Excommunication  was  nothing  less  than 
a  challenge  thrown  down  by  the  Pope  defying  Protestant 
Europe  to  a  conflict  a  otitrance,  which  had  for  its  object 
the  absolute  subjection  of  the  intellects  and  consciences  of 
mankind  to  the  decrees  of  the  Council  of  Trent  (which  had 
closed  its  sittings  seven  years  before) ;  a  conflict  in  which 
all  Europe  should  be  forced  to  take  one  side  or  the  other 
without  hesitation  or  reserve,  on  pain  of  forfeiting  peace 
in  this  world  and  salvation  in  the  next ;  a  conflict  in  which, 
while  it  lasted,  all  laws  were  to  be  abrogated,  and  even  the 
ordinary  conditions  of  warfare  ignored ;  a  conflict  in  which 
mercy  was  to  be  forgotten  till  victory  was  sure  and 
neutrality  to  be  reckoned  criminal  and  dealt  with  as 
treasonable. 

War  was  declared,  and  the  struggle  began.  The  Papacy, 
as  has  been  said,  hoped  for  the  support  of  the  great 
territorial  lords,  and  of  all  who  had  more  sympathy  with 
the  old  order  of  things  than  with  a  present  in  which  they 
were  compelled  to  acquiesce  against  their  wills.  How 
little  the  Papal  advisers  knew  of  the  temper  of  the  people, 
— how  profoundly  ignorant  they  were  of  the  social  and 
intellectual  revolution  that  had  been  going  on  in  England, — 
how  utterly  they  misunderstood  the  spirit  of  the  age  and 
misread  the  signs  of  the  times, — the  event  sufficiently 
proved.  The  landed  interest  had  had  its  day ;  the  towns- 
man's turn  had  come  ;  he  was  for  progress.  What  was  the 
past  to  him  ?  He  was  ready  to  break  with  it  root  and 
branch ;  his  cry  was  *  Reform  ' ;  at  any  rate  he  was  bent 
upon  change ;  he  was  still  loyal  to  the  name  and  person 
of  the  sovereign ;  as  for  the  nobles,  his  reverence  for  them 
had  been  for  some  time  very  much  on  the  wane.  Times 
had  altered  since  the  very  name  of  Duke  had  inspired 
some  little  awe.  There  was  but  a  single  duke  in  England 
now,    and  yet    Norwich   cared   as   little   for   the   Duke  of 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  89 

Norfolk  as  Exeter  did  for  the  Earl  of  Devon.  Henry 
VIII.  had  shown  the  towns  how  little  account  need  be 
taken  of  a  peer  of  the  realm,  and  how  loosely  his  head 
clung  to  his  shoulders.  Even  the  spoliation  of  the  monas- 
teries had  been  a  gain  rather  than  a  loss  to  the  townsmen  ; 
trade  and  commerce  could  get  on  well  enough  without  the 
religious  orders.  Men  were  richer,  more  self-reliant,  more 
independent,  and  less  inclined  to  submit  to  restraints, 
moral  or  religious  ;  as  for  any  other  restraints,  say  social 
and  political  ones,  they  did  not  yet  see  that  these  too  must 
go  some  day  ;  nevertheless  that  day  was  coming.  Already, 
through  many  wide  districts  in  England,  and  nowhere  more 
than  in  the  eastern  counties,  the  town  and  country  parties 
were  in  sharp  antagonism ;  the  one  did  not  know  its 
strength,  nor  the  other  its  weakness ;  but  the  elements 
of  dissension  were  slowly  and  ceaselessly  fermenting 
through  every  grade  of  society.  Kevolutions  may  be 
sudden  and  spasmodic  elsewhere;  with  us  the  nation  is 
not  roused  to  frenzy  in  an  hour.  When  Charles  I.  set  up 
his  standard  at  Nottingham  that  crisis  came  which  a 
hundred  years  of  discontent  and  exasperation,  on  the  one 
side,  and  wounded  pride,  disappointed  ambition,  and  a 
desperate  clinging  to  shadows  when  the  substance  had 
perished,  on  the  other,  had  been  leading  up  to ;  and 
the  sword  once  drawn,  the  issue  was  not  doubtful 
long. 

The  first  Act  of  Parliament  passed  in  the  reign  of  Queen 
Elizabeth  was  one  "  to  restore  to  the  Crown  the  ancient 
jurisdiction  over  the  estate  ecclesiastical  and  spii'itual,  and 
abolishing  all  foreign  powers  repugnant  to  the  same."  By 
the  nineteenth  clause  of  this  Act  it  had  been  enacted  that 
all  ecclesiastical  persons  whatsoever,  all  civil  servants  of 
the  Crown,  all  magistrates,  and  all  taking  any  degree  in 
the  universities,  should  be  required  to  swear  allegiance  to 
the  Queen  in  a  form  of  oath  which  declared  her  to  be 
supreme  "  as  well  in  all  spiritual  or  ecclesiastical  things  or 
causes  as  temporal."  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that 
on    those  two   words   "spiritual   things"    the    differences 


90  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

between  the  Catholic  party  and  the  government  in  England 
turned.  Sir  Thomas  More  had  calmly  laid  his  head  upon 
the  block  rather  than  bind  himself  by  an  oath  less  explicit 
and  precise,  and  at  the  accession  of  Elizabeth  there  were 
not  wanting  many  men  of  conscientious  convictions  who 
would  have  boldly  faced  the  scaffold  rather  than  acknowledge 
the  claim  of  the  spiritual  supremacy  of  the  sovereign. 
Granted  that  this  was  taking  offence  at  a  word — yet,  can 
we  forget  that  some  of  the  most  momentous  struggles  that 
the  world  has  ever  known  have  been  about  a  mere  word 
which  has  grown  to  be  the  war-cry  of  millions  ?  Be  it  as  it 
may,  the  oath  in  its  new  form  became  the  cause  of  deep 
and  widespread  offence.  A  very  large  proportion  of  the 
English  gentry  refused  to  swear  allegiance  in  the  terms 
prescribed,  and  by  their  refusal  forfeited  at  once  any  office 
or  preferment  they  might  happen  to  hold,  and  debarred 
themselves  for  the  future  from  all  positions  of  emolument 
and  all  distinctions  conferring  any  social  status.  These 
men  were  from  this  time  known  as  the  Becusants,  or 
refusers  of  the  oath,  and  the  stigma  and  inconvenience 
attaching  to  the  term  began  then  first  to  be  felt  in  its 
odious  force. 

But  the  next  Act  of  the  same  Parliament  was  one  which 
touched  the  Catholics  in  a  different  way.  The  re-establish- 
ment of  the  mass  in  Queen  Mary's  reign  had  caused 
immense  joy  throughout  the  land,  and  ever  since  the  death 
of  King  Edward  no  other  form  of  administration  of  the 
eucharist  had  been  permitted  in  the  churches  :  now  it  was 
enacted  that  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  alone  should  be 
used,  and  "  to  sing  or  say  any  common  or  open  prayer,  or 
to  minister  amj  sacravient  otherwise  .  .  .  than  is  mentioned 
in  the  said  book  ...  in  any  cathedral  or  parish  church  or 
chapel,  or  in  any  other  place,'^  subjected  the  offender  to 
forfeiture  of  his  goods,  and  on  a  repetition  of  his  offence  to 
imprisonment  for  life.  The  mass  was  felt  to  be,  and  known 
to  be,  the  one  great  and  precious  mystery  which  every 
devout  Catholic  clung  to  with  unspeakable  awe  and  fervour, 
and  to  rob  him  of  that  one  thing  on  which  his  religious  life 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  91 

depended — that  gone,  it  was   imagined   all   else   would  go 
with  it. 

But  this  was  not  all.  It  was  bad  enough  for  the  Catholic 
gentry  to  be  condemned  to  political  extinction ;  worse  that 
they  should  be  denied  freedom  of  worship  and  the  enjoy- 
ment of  what  was  to  them  the  highest  Christian  privilege ; 
but  there  was  yet  another  clause  in  this  Act  which  was  even 
more  galling  and  hateful  than  the  others.  The  fourteenth 
clause  enacted  that  any  person  not  resorting  to  his  parish 
church  on  Sundays  and  holydays  was  to  forfeit  twelvepence 
for  every  offence,  the  money  to  go  to  the  poor  of  the  parish  ; 
the  churchwardens  were  bound  to  "  present "  offenders  to 
the  Ordinary,  but  as  these  had  little  to  gain  and  much  to 
lose  by  embroiling  themselves  with  the  Eecusant  squires, 
and  where  they  did  so  the  fine  could  be  paid  without  any 
great  inconvenience,  the  Catholic  gentry  during  the  first 
twelve  years  of  the  Queen's  reign  could  afford  to  hold  aloof 
from  the  Church  services  without  experiencing  any  great 
pressure,  or  suffering  from  much  except  the  sense  of 
vexation  and  annoyance.  But  when  the  Papal  Bull  was 
launched,  things  began  to  assume  a  more  threatening 
aspect. 

A  few  months  after  the  excommunication  had  been 
pronounced  Parliament  assembled.  One  of  the  first  Acts 
which  it  passed  was  one  "  against  the  bringing  in  or  putting 
in  execution  bulls,  writings,  or  instruments,  and  other 
superstitious  things  from  the  See  of  Kome."  By  this 
statute  it  was  enacted  (i.)  that  *'  if  any  person,  after  the  1st 
day  of  July  next  coming,  shall  use  or  put  in  use  in  any 
place  within  the  realm  any  bull,  writing,  or  instrument  .  .  . 
obtained  or  gotten  .  .  .  from  the  Bishop  of  Eome  .... 
he  shall  sujfcr  pains  of  deaths  and  also  lose  and  forfeit  all 
his  lands,  tenements,  and  hereditaments,  goods  and  chattels, 
as  in  cases  of  high  treason."  It  may  fairly  be  said  that  in 
the  circumstances,  and  considering  the  issues  involved  and 
the  dangers  apprehended,  the  severity  of  this  clause  of  the 
Act  was  at  least  morally  justifiable.  But  there  was  another 
clause  which  affected  the  Catholics  much  more  seriously. 


92  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

As  a  party  they  were  now  much  divided  upon  the  question 
whether  or  not  they  would  or  could  accept  the  Bull  of 
Excommunication;  if  they  had  been  let  alone,  the  probability 
is  that  hatred  of  Spain  and  loyalty  to  England,  feelings 
which  were  steadily  on  the  increase,  would  have  sooner  or 
later  done  more  than  all  these  penal  laws  could  effect ;  but 
the  statute  did  not  stop  at  pronouncing  the  severest 
penalties  upon  those  who  should  assist  in  promulgating  the 
Bull :  it  added  that  "  if  any  person  after  the  same  1st  July 
shall  take  upon  him  to  absolve  or  reconcile  any  person  .  .  . 
or  if  any  shall  willingly  receive  and  take  any  such  absolution 
or  reconciliation,'^  he  should  be  subject  to  exactly  the  same 
penalties  as  in  the  former  case.  Furthermore,  by  the 
seventh  clause  of  the  statute  it  was  enacted  that  ''if  any 
person  .  .  .  shall  bring  into  the  realm  any  tokens,  crosses, 
pictures,  beads,  or  such  like  vain  superstitious  things,  from 
the  Bishop  or  See  of  Rome  .  .  .  and  shall  deliver  the  same 
to  any  subject  of  the  realm  .  .  .  then  that  person  so  doing 
...  as  well  as  every  other  person  as  shall  receive  the  same 
.  .  .  shall  incur  the  penalties  of  the  Statute  of  Praemunire.'' 
By  virtue  of  this  clause  any  Catholic  priest  admitted  to 
his  orders  on  the  other  side  of  the  Channel,  and  venturing 
to  exercise  his  functions  in  England,  did  so  at  the  peril  of 
his  life ;  and  whosoever  dared  to  receive  absolution  at  his 
hands  incurred  the  same  penalty,  with  forfeiture  of  all  his 
worldly  goods  besides.  As  for  the  fine  for  not  attending 
church,  it  remained  as  before,  but  the  day  was  coming 
when  the  penalties  imposed  for  this  offence  were  to  amount 
to  the  confiscation  of  the  property  of  all  but  the  wealthiest 
proprietors. 

Rome  had  sown  the  wind,  the  whirlwind  followed.  On 
the  2nd  of  June  of  the  following  year  the  Duke  of  Norfolk 
was  beheaded  at  the  Tower — a  flimsy  dupe,  whom  more 
cunning  conspirators  had  put  forward  as  the  leader  of  the 
Roman  cause,  and  whose  misfortune  was  that  he  had  been 
born  to  a  station  to  which  in  those  rough  times  he  was 
unequal.  On  the  22nd  of  August  the  Earl  of  Northumber- 
land, whom  the  Scots  had  sold,  suffered,  at  York,  the  tardy 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  93 

penalty    of   that   Northern   Eebelhon    of   which   we   have 
already   heard.     Two   days   after   his    execution    the    un- 
paralleled   enormity    of    the    St.   Bartholomew    massacre 
occurred  at  Paris,  and  the  tidings  were  not  slow  in  crossing 
the   Channel.     The   indignation   of   every   generous   heart 
blazed  forth  in  flames   of  wrath,  horror,  and  resentment ; 
every  heart,  that  is,  in   which   the   moral   sense   had   not 
become  perverted  by  the  insane  infatuation  which  religious 
fanaticism   engenders.     From   that    day   the   Catholics   in 
England  began  to  have  a  hard  time  of  it,  though  the  worst 
had  not  come  yet.     For  the  present  it  would  seem  that  the 
Queen's  ministers  proceeded  with  some  moderation  against 
the  Eomanising  gentry,  and  I  cannot  find  that  any  general 
pressure  was  put  upon  the  Eecusants ;  nor  does   it  appear 
that  the  publication  of  the  Papal  Bull  had  had  any  great 
eifect   in   adding  to  their  number  or  confirming  them  in 
their  resolution.  3     Nevertheless  there  was  no  intention  of 
sparing  those  who,  after  time  given  for  amendment,  should 
still  persist  in  siding  with  the   Pope   against   the   Queen. 
The  Council,  busied  with  the  complications  of  Elizabeth's 
foreign  policy  and  the  matrimonial  farces  which  were  for 
ever  being  discussed,   proposed,   initiated,   and   dismissed, 
were  content  to  hang  up  the  scourge   that  was   ready   at 
hand,  and  could  be  used  at  any  moment  if  it  were  wanted : 
for  the  present  it  was  not  wanted,  and  while  the  burning 
indignation   which   the   Bartholomew  horror   had  aroused 
was  still  hot,  there  was  little  to  fear  from  the  smouldering 
discontent  and  stubborn  refusal  "  to  keep  their  church  "  by 
the  country  squires  and  some  few  perverse  enthusiasts  in 
the  smaller  towns. 

As  though  to  deepen  the  impression  which  the  Bartholo- 
mew massacre  had  produced,  scarce  four  years  after  its 
occurrence  came  the  horrible  sack  of  Antwerp,  and  the 
frightful  atrocities  of  Spanish  ruffians  in  Belgium.  4  There 
was  no  need  to  exaggerate  barbarities  so  revolting  and 
inhuman,  but  the  pulpit  and  the  ballad-mongers,  and 
subsequently  the  stage,  severally  turned  them  to  account, 
the  Pope  being  credited  with  his  full  share  of  the  blame. 


94  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

While  these  events  were  succeeding  one  another  so  rapidly, 
and  while  the  people  at  large  were  drawing  their  inferences 
from  them,  the  politicians  could  afford  to  wait  and  hold 
their  hands.  But  that  the  Romanising  gentry  were  not 
forgotten,  and  that  a  sharp  eye  was  kept  upon  them,  is 
plain  enough  from  the  following  curious  episode. 

In   July   1578  the   Queen   started   upon  a  *'  Progress. "5 
Her   first   intention   was  to    receive   the    members    of  the 
University  of    Cambridge   at   Audley  End,    to   proceed   to 
Long  Melford  Hall  in  Suffolk,  and  to  return  by  Cambridge, 
and  thence  through  Hunts,  Beds,  and  Bucks  to  Windsor. 
The  plan  was  for  some  reason  or  other  suddenly  changed. 
On  the  4th  of  August  she  slept  at  Melford ;  next  morning 
she  rode  on  to  Lawshall  Hall,  near  Bury    St.   Edmunds, 
and  thence  to  Hawstead.^     On  the  7th  she  was  at  Bury ; 
and  on  Sunday,  the  10th,  she  was  entertained  at  a  house 
called  Euston  Hall,  near  Thetford,  by  a  gentleman  of  the 
name  of  Edward  Rookwood,  who  had  but  lately  come  of  age, 
and  was  newly  married.7     The  house  was  of  no  great  size, 
and  confessedly  unfit  for  the  entertainment  of   the  royal 
party.      There   were    several   far   larger   mansions   in   the 
neighbourhood,    and   yet  her   Majesty    was   persuaded   to 
visit   it,    for   reasons   which   will    be    apparent  presently. 
When  the  Queen  took  leave,  Mr.  Rookwood  was  admitted 
in  the  usual  course  to  kiss  her  Majesty's  hand :  no  sooner 
had   he   done    so   than    the    Lord   Chamberlain   bade  him 
stand  aside,  and  in  no  measured  terms  charged  him  with 
being   a   recusant,   who  was  unfit   to  be  in  the  presence, 
much  less  touch  the  sacred  person,  of  his  sovereign.     The 
unlucky  man,   quite  unprepared  for  so  sudden  and  unex- 
pected  an   attack,  appears   to   have  made  no  reply ;    and 
the  scene  ended  by  his  being  required  to  attend  the  Council 
under  surveillance.     When  he  reached  Norwich,   he  was 
committed  to  the  castle. 

Four  days  after  this  incident  the  royal  retinue  crossed 
over  into  Norfolk ;  and  on  the  16th  we  find  the  Queen 
dining  with  the  "  Lady  Style "  at  Braconash,  about  six 
miles  from  Norwich.^     Lady  Style  was  the  "  Lady  Eliza- 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  95 

beth  Style  "  of  the  Braconash  parish  register,  who  was  at 
this  time  wife  of  Thomas  Townshend,  a  man  of  large 
possessions  in  the  county  of  Norfolk. 9  He  appears  to 
have  kept  considerable  state  at  Braconash,  and  to  have 
lived  on  a  scale  of  baronial  hospitahty.  But  Mr.  Towns- 
hend was  under  suspicion.  A  cousin  of  his,  who  lived 
a  few  miles  off,  was  actually  a  recusant,  and  was  repeatedly 
fined  for  his  offence ;  and  though  Thomas  Townshend  had 
himself  conformed,  his  wife,  "the  Lady  Style,"  had  refused 
to  do  so.  This  time  the  Queen's  host  was  spared,  not  so 
the  guests.  Nine  of  the  neighbouring  gentry,  who  pre- 
sumably had  come  to  show  their  respect  for  their  sovereign, 
but  who  hitherto  had  declined  the  oath  from  conscientious 
scruples,  were  forthwith  arrested,  as  Kookwood  had  been, 
dragged  to  Norwich,  and  were  either  sent  to  jail  or 
bound  over  under  a  bond  of  £200  a  piece  to  keep  to  their 
lodgings  in  Norwich  until  further  notice. ^°  Nor  was  this 
all  :  from  Braconash  the  cortege  pushed  on  to  Norwich. 
About  a  mile  from  the  city  it  was  met  by  a  gentleman 
of  the  name  of  Downes,  lord  of  the  manor  of  Erlham, 
which  was  held  under  the  crown  by  Petit  Serjeantry  or 
service  of  a  cross-bow  and  a  pair  of  spurs.  Mr.  Downes 
presented  the  Queen  with  a  pair  of  gold  spurs,  and  in 
offering  them  addressed  her  in  some  English  verses,  which 
have  been  preserved.  But  he  too  was  a  recusant,  and 
had  not  "  kept  his  church."  He  was  not  more  fortunate 
than  the  others :  he  was  bidden  to  stand  aside,  and  followed 
the  Council  into  the  city  of  Norwich,  where  he  was  com- 
mitted to  jail." 

At  Norwich  the  Queen  lodged  at  the  bishop's  palace,  and 
spent  her  time,  as  far  as  the  bad  weather  would  allow, 
in  listening  to  absurd  speeches  and  witnessing  grotesque 
pageants  ;  but  on  the  19th  August  {i.e.,  with  the  dog-days 
just  ended)  she  suddenly  resolved  to  go  a  huntmg  in  the 
park  of  Cossey,  five  miles  from  Norwich,  which  belonged  to' 
Mr.  Henry  Jernegan,  ancestor  of  the  present  Lord  Stafford. 
Cossey  was  at  this  time  occupied  by  Lady  Jernegan,  widow 
of  Sir  Henry  Jernegan,  who  had  been  one  of   the   most 


96  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

active  adherents  of  Queen  Mary,  and  who  had  made  him- 
self very  conspicuous  in  opposing  the  abominable  attempt 
to  set  aside  Mary  and  Elizabeth  as  heirs  to  the  crown  at 
the  death  of  Edward  VI.  In  return  for  his  loyalty  he 
had  received  this  very  domain  of  Cossey  at  Queen  Mary's 
hands.  It  would  have  been  a  little  too  bad,  even  in 
those  times,  for  the  widow  of  a  man  to  whom  Elizabeth 
herself  must  have  felt  that  she  lay  under  deep  obligations 
to  be  in  her  old  age  molested  and  persecuted  for  her 
religious  convictions ;  nor,  indeed,  was  her  son,  who  was 
now  living  at  Wingfield  Castle,  interfered  with  for  the 
present,  though  his  time  was  coming;  and  so  when,  three 
days  after,  the  Council  met  and  made  order  for  the  com- 
mittal to  jail  of  such  of  the  Norfolk  gentry  as  had  not 
kept  their  church,  and  upon  whom  the  hand  of  power  had 
begun  to  press  heavily,  Mr.  Jernegan's  name  was  omitted, 
though  his  kinsman  Mr.  Bedingfeld's  name  figures  on 
the  list,  and  appears  again  and  again  hereafter. 

These  were  the  vexations  which  drove  men  mad,  and 
irritated  them  when  they  were  beginning  to  acquiesce  in 
the  inevitable.  But  the  truth  is,  a  detestable  system  had 
now  begun  to  spring  up,  under  which  no  one  with  any 
conscience  or  any  religious  scruples  could  hold  himself 
safe  for  an  hour.  An  army  of  spies  and  common  informers 
were  prowling  about  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land, 
living  by  their  wits,  and  feeding  partly  upon  the  terrors 
of  others  and  partly  upon  the  letter  of  the  law  as  laid  down 
in  the  recent  Acts — wretches  who  had  everything  to  gain 
by  straining  the  penalties  to  the  utmost,  for  they  claimed 
their  share  of  the  spoil.  Armed  with  warrants  from 
weak  magistrates,  who  themselves  were  afraid  of  sus- 
picion, or,  failing  these,  armed  with  an  order  from  the 
Privy  Council,  which  was  only  too  easily  ,to  be  obtained, 
they  sallied  forth  on  their  mission  of  treachery.  They 
were  nothing  better  than  bandits  protected  by  the  law, 
let  loose  upon  that  portion  of  the  community  which  might 
be  harried  and  robbed  with  impunity.  In  some  cases 
the   pursuivants,  after   arresting   their  victims  and  appro- 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  97 


priating  their  money,  were  content  to  let  them  alone,  and 
save  themselves  further  trouble  ;  in  others  they  kept  them 
till  a  ransom  might  come  from  friends  ;  in  any  case  there 
was  always  the  fun  of  half-scuttling  a  big  house  and  living 
at  free  quarters  during  the  search,  and  the  chance  of 
securing  a  handsome  bribe  in  consideration  of  being  left 
unmolested  for  the  future.^^ 

Chief  among  these  miscreants,  of  whom  we  hear  so 
much  ten  years  after,  was  one  Richard  Topcliffe.  He  was 
of  an  old  Lincolnshire  family,  son  and  heir  of  Robert 
Topcliffe  of  Somerly,  by  Margaret,  daughter  of  Thomas 
Lord  Borough.  He  married  Joan,  daughter  of  Sir  Edward 
Willoughby  of  WoUarton,  co.  Notts.  He  was  born,  accord- 
ing to  his  own  account,  some  time  in  1532,  and  early  in 
life  seems  to  have  attached  himself  to  the  Court.  The 
first  notice  I  find  of  him  is  shortly  after  the  collapse  of 
the  Northern  Rebellion,  when  he  is  a  suitor  for  the  lands 
of  old  Richard  Norton  of  Norton  Conyers,  co.  York,  who 
had  made  himself  so  conspicuous  in  Durham  Cathedral. 
Three  years  after  this  he  appears  to  have  been  regularly 
in  Burghley's  pay,  or  at  any  rate  employed  by  him,  but  in 
what  capacity  does  not  transpire ;  and  he  comes  out  first 
in  his  character  of  scourge  and  persecutor  of  Catholics 
during  this  same  Norfolk  Progress. '3 

The  cruelties  of  this  monster  during  the  next  quarter  of  a 
century  would  fill  a  volume,  and  the  expedients  he  resorted 
to  to  hunt  down  Recusants,  Seminary  Priests,  and  Jesuits 
would  be  absolutely  incredible  were  it  not  that  the  evidence 
of  even  his  own  admission  is  too  strong  to  be  controverted. 
In  the  case  of  poor  Robert  Southwell,  it  is  certain  that  he 
seduced  the  daughter  of  one  of  his  victims,  and  used  her 
for  playing  upon  her  own  father,  in  whose  house  Southwell 
was  apprehended. -4  In  November,  1594,  he  sued  an  accom- 
plice of  his  own,  Thomas  Fitzherbert,  in  the  Court  of 
Chancery  in  a  bond  for  £3,000.  "■  For  whereas  Fitzherbert 
entered  into  bonds  to  give  £5,000  unto  TopcUffe,  if  he  loould 
persecute  his  father  and  uncle  to  death,  together  tvith  Mr. 
Bassett,  Fitzherbert  pleaded  that  the  conditions  were  not 

7 


98  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

fulfilled,  because  they  died  naturally,  and  Bassett  was  in 
prosperity.  Bassett  gave  witness  what  treacherous  devices 
he  had  made  to  entrap  him,  and  Coke,  the  Queen's 
Attorney,  gave  testimony  openly  that  he  very  well  had 
proved  how  effectually  Topcliffe  had  sought  to  inform  him 
against  them  contrary  to  all  equity  and  conscience."  ^s 
This  was  rather  too  disgraceful  a  business  to  be  discussed 
in  open  court,  and  "  the  matter  was  put  over  for  secret 
hearing,"  when  it  would  seem  that  Topcliffe,  standing 
somewhat  stiffly  to  his  claim,  lost  his  temper,  and  let 
fall  some  expressions  which  were  supposed  to  reflect  upon 
the  Lord  Keeper  and  some  members  of  the  Privy  Council, 
whereupon  he  was  committed  to  the  Marshalsea  for  con- 
tempt, and  kept  there  for  some  months.  While  he  was 
incarcerated,  he  addressed  two  letters  to  the  Queen, 
which  have  been  preserved,  and  two  more  detestable 
compositions  it  would  be  difficult  to  find.  In  one  of  them, 
dated  ''Good  or  Evil  Friday,  1595,"  he  says,  '*...! 
have  helped  more  traitors  [to  Tyburn]  than  all  the  noble- 
men and  gentlemen  of  the  court,  your  counsellors  excepted. 
And  now  by  this  disgrace  I  am  in  fair  way  and  made  apt 
to  adventure  my  life  every  night  to  murderers,  for  since 
I  was  committed,  wine  in  Westminster  hath  been  given 
for  joy  of  that  news.  In  all  prisons  rejoicings ;  and  it  is 
like  that  the  fresh  dead  bones  of  Father  Southwell  at  Tyburn 
and  FatJier  Walpole  at  York,  executed  both  since  Shrovetide, 
will  dance  for  joy !  "  '^ 

The  scoundrel  was  out  of  prison  again  and  at  his  old 
tricks  in  October,  the  restless  ferocity  of  the  man  never 
allowing  his  persecuting  mania  to  cease  for  an  hour.  The 
last  time  I  meet  with  him  is  in  1598,  when  one  Jones, 
a  Franciscan,  was  executed  with  the  usual  cruelties  on 
the  12th  July,  having  been  hunted  to  his  death  by  Top- 
cliffe's  means. ^7  What  became  of  him  at  last  it  is  not 
worth  while  to  inquire,  though  it  is  the  fate  of  such 
monsters  of  iniquity  that  their  names  can  hardly  go  down 
to  oblivion.  Even  enormous  crime  insures  a  measure,  if 
not  of  fame,  yet  of  infamy. ^^ 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  99 

But  besides  and  beyond  the  pressure  exercised  by  those 
two  great  levers  for  acting  upon  the  Catholics,  the  oath 
of  allegiance  and  the  compulsory  attendance  at  church, 
soon  came  another  vexation.  When,  shortly  after  Eliza- 
beth had  come  to  the  crown,  the  Eoman  ritual  was  put 
down,  the  bench  of  bishops  displaced,  and  the  oath  of 
allegiance  in  its  obnoxious  form  was  exacted  of  all  who 
held  office  in  Church  or  State,  the  same  result  had 
followed  which  followed  when  Mary  began  to  reign  :  there 
was  a  very  serious  exodus  of  the  most  learned  and  most 
conscientious  of  the  clergy  and  of  the  most  distinguished 
members  of  both  universities.  Of  the  deprived  bishops, 
with  the  exception  of  Scott,  Bishop  of  Chester,  and  Gold- 
well  of  St.  Asaph,  who  slipped  away  across  the  Channel, 
Pate,  Bishop  of  Worcester,  who  was  imprisoned  from  1559 
to  1561,  and  died  at  Louvain  in  1565,  and  Watson,  Bishop 
of  London,  who  was  either  in  prison  or  custody  till  his 
death  in  1561,  all  were  suffered  to  remain  unmolested, 
though  under  surveillance,  and,  as  far  as  I  know,  absolutely 
unprovided  for.  Ten  deans  of  English  cathedrals  and 
nearly  fifty  canons  were  deprived.  Fifteen  heads  of 
colleges  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  driven  out  for  the 
most  part  into  banishment ;  a  host  of  beneficed  clergymen, 
whose  number  it  is  impossible  to  ascertain  ;  and  some  of 
the  most  learned  scholars,  professors,  and  fellows  of 
colleges  at  both  universities,  bravely  gave  up  their  emolu- 
ments rather  than  act  against  their  consciences  by  taking 
an  engagement  which  they  were  persuaded  it  was  un- 
lawful to  be  bound  by.^9  In  many  cases  these  refugees 
had  taken  with  them  across  the  seas  the  sons  of  the 
discontented  gentry,  who  accompanied  them  as  their 
pupils;  and  in  not  a  few  instances  the  reputation  of  an 
exiled  scholar  attracted  the  children  of  parents  who, 
though  conforming,  yet  felt  a  deep  dislike  for  the  new 
regime,  and  an  intense  longing  for  a  restoration  of  the 
old  faith,  to  which  in  their  hearts  they  clung  so  fondly. 
The  exiles  were  not  content  with  themselves  being  suf- 
ferers ;  they  were  perpetually  acting  the  part  of  proselytisers. 


joo  ONE   GENERATION  OF 


By  every  available  opportunity  letters  of  impassioned 
remonstrance  and  earnest  warning  were  addressed  to 
friends  and  relatives  at  home,  calling  upon  those  who 
still  clung  to  their  fatherland  to  renounce  it  and  join  their 
exiled  brethren,  describing  in  glowing  terms  the  blessedness 
and  peace  of  such  as  had  "left  all  for  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,"  and  putting  forward  every  conceivable  argument 
to  bring  over  those  who  were  hesitating  to  take  the  step 
which  they  felt  to  be  irrevocable.^'' 

Prodigious  force  and  point  were  added  to  these  appeals, 
and  a  material  guarantee  was  given  of  some  hope  of 
maintenance  for  the  exiles,  by  the  foundation  of  Cardinal 
Allen's  splendid  college  at  Douay,  which  they  who  enter 
the  town  from  the  present  railway  station  cannot  fail  to  see, 
the  immense  buildings  still  existing  being  used  to-day  as 
a  barrack  for  seven  hundred  men.  Douay  College  was 
founded  in  1568.  During  the  first  two  years  its  success 
seemed  a  matter  of  uncertainty,  but  the  reputation  of  the 
scholars  who  repaired  thither  and  constituted  the  tuitional 
staff  soon  dispelled  whatever  doubt  had  existed,  and  the 
influence  which  it  was  likely  to  exercise  in  supplying 
England  with  priests  strongly  impregnated  with  ultramon- 
tane sentiment,  and  animated  by  a  genuine  enthusiasm  to 
"  labour  in  the  English  vineyard,"  or  to  win  for  themselves 
the  martyr's  crown,  began  to  be  felt  as  a  real  danger  which 
must  be  met  by  uncompromising  and  remorseless  severity. 
The  first  victim  was  Cuthbert  Mayne.  He  had  been  a 
fellow  of  St.  John's  College,  Oxford,  at  the  time  that 
Campion  was  in  residence  there,  and,  yielding  to  the 
solicitations  of  his  friends,  had  fled  across  the  seas,  and 
after  going  through  a  course  of  preparatory  study  at  Douay 
had  returned  to  England.  He  took  refuge  with  a  gentle- 
man in  Cornwall,  Francis  Tregian  by  name,  a  man  of 
wealth  and  high  birth,  and  continued  with  him  for  some 
time,  ostensibly  as  steward.  The  spies  were  soon  upon  his 
track,  and  in  the  summer  of  1577  he  himself  was  appre- 
hended, and,  what  was  more  to  the  purpose  from  the 
informer's  point  of  view,  Mr.  Tregian  was  a  ruined    man 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  toi 


_^ — j.-.»._ 


and  his  estate  forfeited.  Cuthbert  Mayn'e  was' hung,  drawn, 
and  quartered  at  Launceston  on  the  29th  November,  the 
proto-martyr  of  the  BngHsh  College  of  Douay,  as  he  has 
since  been  reckoned  and  designated.  But  in  that  same 
year  no  less  than  twenty-four  priests  were  ordained  at  the 
college,  and  the  next  spring  two  of  these  "  Seminarists  " 
were  executed  at  Tyburn ;  John  Nelson  on  the  3rd,  and 
Thomas  Sherwood  on  the  7t-h  of  February.^^ 

By  this  time  the  English  Government  had  begun  to  be 
thoroughly  alarmed.  It  was  well  known  that  the  education 
of  the  country  was  in  a  very  unsatisfactory  state ;  that  not 
only  was  there  a  serious  deficiency  in  the  number  of 
candidates  for  Holy  Orders,  but  the  character  and  ability  of 
these  candidates  were  very  much  below  what  was  needed. 
Elizabeth  had  been  now  twenty  years  upon  the  throne, 
but  things  had  not  much  improved  among  the  rank 
and  file  of  the  clergy.  Cartwright  again  and  again 
charges  Archbishop  Whitgift  with  the  undeniable  fact 
that  **  there  be  admitted  into  the  ministry  of  the 
basest  sort  .  .  .  such  as  suddenly  are  changed  out 
of  a  serving-man's  coat  into  a  minister's  cloak,  making 
for  the  most  part  the  ministry  their  last  refuge.  "^^ 
Some  of  the  best  of  them  were  ignorant  ranters,  utterly 
unfit  to  cope  with  the  trained  dialecticians  who  were  being 
reared  so  carefully  beyond  the  seas  ;  and  when  the  time  for 
disputation  came,  as  it  did  so  frequently,  the  fervent  but 
uneducated  Gospeller  proved  to  his  own  astonishment  no 
match  at  all  for  the  gladiator  of  the  seminaries,  whose  skill 
and  success  in  such  encounters  confirmed  him  in  his  belief 
that  the  cause  was  good  and  the  reasoning  unanswerable 
which  appeared,  so  far,  to  be  easily  and  triumphantly 
defensible.23  If  the  clergy  were  ignorant  and  socially 
unpresentable,  and  so  had  little  to  teach,  the  condition  of 
the  schools  was  hardly  more  satisfactory.  It  is  difficult  to 
understand  how  the  rising  generation  during  the  early  years 
of  Elizabeth's  reign  received  any  education  at  all.  Up  to 
the  time  of  the  dissolution  of  the  monasteries  there  were 
not  seventy  schools  in  England  unconnected  with  monastic 


I02  ONE   GENERATION  OF 


institutions.  "How  important  a  part  these  latter  played  in 
the  education  of  the  country  is  evident  from  the  necessity 
which  was  acknowledged  of  making  provision  for  the 
training  of  youth  out  of  the  suppressed  abbeys ;  and  in  the 
last  twelve  years  of  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.  no  less  than 
thirty-eight  grammar-schools  were  founded,  partly  out  of 
the  abbey  lands  and  partly  by  the  munificence  of  private 
benefactors.  In  Edward  VI. 's  short  reign  the  number  was 
increased  by  fifty-one,  of  which  twenty-seven  claim  the 
King  as  their  founder  ;  seventeen  more  were  established  in 
the  following  reign  ;  and  about  eighty  more  were  built  and 
endowed  during  the  first  thirty  years  of  Queen  Elizabeth. ^4 
Thus  the  whole  number  of  schools  in  England,  even  in 
the  latter  half  of  the  Queen's  reign,  scarcely  reached  two 
hundred,  and  these,  with  the  Universities  and  the  Inns  of 
Court,  represented  the  whole  educational  machinery  of  the 
country ;  for  as  for  the  private  schoolmaster,  he  was  a 
person  who  in  those  days  had  scarcely  any  existence.  No 
man  might  exercise  the  vocation  of  schoolmaster  at  all 
except  he  were  duly  licensed  by  the  bishop  of  the  diocese  in 
which  he  resided,  and  at  any  moment  he  was  liable  to  be 
called  to  account  for  his  opinions,  political  and  theological. 
Meanwhile,  considerable  efforts  were  made  from  time  to 
time  to  raise  the  standard  of  education  at  the  schools,  and 
extraordinary  favour  was  shown  to  schoolmasters  in  various 
ways.  They  were  regarded  as  a  privileged  class,  and  their 
social  status  appears  to  have  been  higher  as  a  rule  than 
that  of  the  beneficed  clergy  :  they  were  exempted  from  the 
payment  of  taxes  of  all  kinds,  and  from  many  burdens 
which  pressed  upon  other  members  of  the  commonwealth, 
and  the  favour  shown  to  them  on  many  occasions  was  con- 
spicuous.^5  But  there  was  no  unanimity  in  the  teaching  of 
English  schools ;  each  one  had  his  own  tricks  which  he 
called  his  system,  and  each  was  only  too  ready  to  rush  into 
print  and  publish  some  new  primer  or  elementary  book, 
whereby  he  hoped  to  get  for  himself  notice,  reward,  or  fame. 
The  whole  state  of  education  in  England  was  chaotic,  and 
to  this  must  be  added  the  fact  that  there  was  a  great  deal 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  103 


of  coarse  brutality  in  the  discipline.  Ascham's  beautiful 
Schole  master  lets  us  into  a  great  deal,  and  shows  the 
interest  that  was  taken  in  the  subject  of  education  among 
the  upper  classes  in  Elizabeth's  reign ;  but  it  shows  us  too 
that  the  good  schoolmasters  were  few  and  the  books  bad, 
and  the  commonest  feeling  among  schoolboys  was  '*  the 
butcherlie  fear  in  making  Latines  "  which  their  pedagogues 
inspired  of  malice  prepense.  On  the  other  hand,  prodigious 
reforms  had  been  wrought  in  education  on  the  Continent. 
In  Saxony,  Wiirtemberg — above  all  at  Strasburg — normal 
schools  had  been  established  w^hose  reputation  had  spread 
over  Europe.  Their  "directors"  were  men  not  only  of 
profound  learning  but  of  immense  earnestness  and  enthu- 
siasm, who  contrived  to  animate  their  scholars  with  a 
thirst  for  knowledge  and  the  higher  culture  which  knew 
no  bounds.  In  England  the  pedagogues  knew  only  one 
way  of  getting  their  pupils  to  learn  anything — viz.,  by  an 
unsparing  use  of  the  rod.  In  Germany  this  engine  was 
almost  banished  from  the  schools  which  flourished  so 
marvellously.  There,  too,  the  books  were  incomparably 
superior  to  our  own  :  we  were  as  yet  in  the  barbaric  stage.^^ 
Nor,  while  the  Protestant  schools  were  gaining  for  them- 
selves renown,  were  the  Jesuits  idle  :  it  is  in  the  domain 
of  education  that  the  Society  of  Jesus  has  achieved  its  most 
solid  triumphs.  Little  inclined  as  Lord  Bacon  was  to  look 
with  favour  upon  the  followers  of  Loyola,  he  yet  has  left 
us  a  generous  testimony  to  the  excellence  of  their  schools 
and  colleges.  The  organisation  of  these  seminaries  in  the 
sixteenth  century  was  far  in  advance  of  anything  known  on 
our  side  of  the  Channel.  Their  school-books  were  con- 
fessedly far  superior  to  our  own,  and  their  discipline  was 
vigilant  and  protective  beyond  anything  that  had  ever  been 
known  in  England. ^7 

Though  Cardinal  Allen's  colleges  were  not  meant  to  be 
Jesuit  colleges,  and  were  as  a  rule  under  the  government 
and  direction  of  secular  clergy,  yet  they  were,  of  course, 
organised  after  the  most  approved  Jesuit  model,  and  it  was 
not  long  before  they  became  deservedly  celebrated  for  the 


I04     ONE   GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE 

quality  of  the  instruction  they  imparted,  and  the  high  tone 
which  their  scholars  exhibited.     They  were  '*  gentlemanly  " 
places  of   education  :    a  man  could  hardly  send  a  son  to 
Douay   or    St.   Omer   if   he  were   not   a   man   of   fortune. 
Moreover,  he  certainly  would  not  send  him  there  if  he  were 
satisfied   with   what   he   could   find    nearer   home :    every 
English   lad   who   crossed    the    sea   to   get   his   education 
elsewhere  was  by  the  very  fact  of  his  leaving  the   kingdom 
shown  to  be  the  son  of  a  malcontent — of  one  who  at  best 
was  not   content  with  the  education   patronised,  fostered, 
and  sanctioned  by  the  Queen's  ministers,  and  who  almost 
certainly  had  strong  leanings  towards  Eoman  doctrine,  and 
favoured  Rome's  claims.     For  a  while  no  notice  was  taken 
of  the  new  colleges.     No  great  difficulty  seems  to  have  been 
experienced   by   the   gentry   in   getting   licences   for   their 
children   to   travel   abroad,    and    one    after    another   they 
crossed  over,  usually  in  small  companies,  and  often  under 
the  care  of  a  trusty  tutor,  who  in  many  cases  went  in  the 
disguise  of  a  merchant  or  trader  engaged   in   commercial 
undertakings.     But  when  Douay  College  began  to  assume 
more     formidable     proportions,     and     when     from     small 
beginnings   it   grew   into   an    institution   which    aimed   at 
supplying  England  with  a  regular  succession  of  missionary 
clergy,  every  one  of  whom  was  bound  to  do  his  utmost  to 
convert  the    "heretics"    and   to   bring  them   back   to   the 
bosom  of  the  Catholic  Church,  then  the  existence  of   this 
Douay  College  became  a  standing  menace,  and  to  ignore  it 
was  no  longer  possible.     The  irritation  of  the  government 
was    extreme ;    the   provocations   offered  by  the    Catholic 
exiles  and  their  supporters  abroad  never  ceased;  and  just 
when    the    Queen's    ministers   were    most    perplexed,    the 
tidings  came  that  the  Society  of  Jesus  was  to  enter  upon 
a    mission    to    England,    and   that   Fathers    Parsons    and 
Campion  had  set  out  from  Rome. 


NOTES   TO   CHAPTEK   III 

1.  Page  86.  Wright's  Queen  Elizabeth  and  her  Times,  i.  331. 
Froucle's  History  of  England,  ix.  c.  18. 

2.  Page  87.  Lingard,  vi.  110.  The  text  of  the  Bull  may  be  seen 
in  Tierney's  Dodd,  vol.  iii.  Appendix,  and  a  translation  of  it  in  Fuller's 
Church  History,  b.  ix.  cent.  xvi.  sect.  ii.  §  24. 

3.  Page  93.  This  is  the  impression  left  upon  my  mind  after  much 
reading  on  the  subject  and  much  careful  weighing  of  evidence,  printed 
and  in  manuscript.  Tierney's  note  in  Dodd,  vol.  iii.  p.  12,  does  not  satisfy 
me  or  in  any  way  shake  the  conviction  I  have  arrived  at.  But  see  Fuller's 
Church  History,  u.s.  ;  Berington's  Memoirs  of  Panzani,  Int.  p.  15  ;  and 
especially  Simpson's  Life  of  Campion,  p.  62. 

4.  Page  93.  See  Mr.  Simpson's  valuable  reprint,  "  A  Larum  for 
London,  or  the  Siege  of  Antwerp,"  with  its  wonderfully  learned  Intro- 
duction. It  is  surprising  that  this  notable  contribution  to  Shaksperian 
literature  should  have  attracted  such  little  notice. 

5.  Page  94.  See  Nichols's  Progresses  and  Public  Processions  of 
Queen  Elisabeth,  vol.  ii.  pp.  108-225.  The  dates  given  in  the  text  are 
from  the  MS.  Records  of  the  Privy  Council,  to  which  I  was  allowed  access 
in  1875. 

6.  Page  94.  Lawshall  was  the  seat  of  Henky  Druey,  second  son  of 
Sir  William  Druby  of  Hawstead  ;  his  elder  brother  Robert  had  died 
during  his  father's  lifetime,  leaving,  by  Audrey,  daughter  of  Richard 
Lord  Rich,  William  Drury,  his  son  and  heir  ;  this  William  was  living 
at  Hawstead  when  Queen  Elizabeth  was  on  her  progress.  The  Drurys 
were  suspected,  not  without  reason,  of  having  no  love  for  the  "  new 
learning."  It  is  clear  that  Sir  William  Drury,  who  died  in  1557,  was 
a  devout  Catholic.  In  his  will,  besides  other  bequests  which  indicate  his 
leanings,  he  leaves  a  "  vestiment  with  the  Albe  and  all  that  belongeth  to 
it,  for  a  priest  to  sing  in." — (Cullum's  Hawstead,  p.  149.)  His  son 
Henry  had  been  returned  as  absent  abroad,  without  a  licence,  in  1576, 
and  must  have  lately  come  back  to  Lawshall  when  the  Queen  visited  his 
house ;  two  of  his  daughters,  Dorothy  and  Frances,  were  married 
respectively  to  Robert  Rookwood  of  Coldham  Hall,  co.  Suffolk,  and 
James  Hubbard  of  Hailes  Hall,  co.  Norfolk,  and  are  frequently  presented 
with  their  husbands  as  obstinate  Recusants.  John  Drury  of  Godwick, 
CO.  Norfolk,  another  of  the  family,  figures  as  a  Recusant  again  and  again 
in  the  Holkam  Charters,  Nos.  920-940,  Cullum  is  certainly  wrong  in 
supposing  that  Sir  William  Drury  the  younger  lived  at  Lawshall ;  he 

105 


io6  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

had  just  rebuilt  Hawstead  House.  His  uncle  Heney  is  described  as  of 
Lawshall  in  the  list  of  Suffolk  Kecusants  as  late  as  1594. — Karl.  MSS. 
6998,  No.  165. 

7.  Page  94.  There  were  two  families  of  the  name  of  Rookwood  in 
Suffolk— 

(1)  Rookwood  of  Staningfield,  to    which  family  belonged  Ambrose 

Rookiooodf  who  was  hung  for  complicity  in  the  Gunpowder 
Plot. 

(2)  Rookwood  of  Euston,  whose  representative,  Edward  Rookwood, 

was  Queen  Elizabeth's  host. 

The  two  families  bore  different  arms,  but  both  were  staunch  and 
devoted  Catholics,  and  suffered  severely  during  the  whole  of  Elizabeth's 
reign.  When  James  I.'s  accession  brought  no  alleviation  to  the  Catholics, 
who  had  looked  to  him  to  relieve  them  from  the  pressure  of  the  penal 
laws,  such  men  as  Ambrose  Rookwood  grew  desperate  and  were  ready 
for  anything.  Edward  Rookwood  of  Euston  was  utterly  beggared  by  the 
exactions  levied  upon  him,  and  I  find  him  in  the  Fleet  Prison  for  debt 
in  1619  ;  how  long  he  continued  there  I  know  not,  but  he  died  in  1634, 
a3t.  79.  There  is  a  very  fair  account  of  the  Euston  Rookwoods  in  Page's 
Supplement  to  the  Suffolk  Traveller,  p.  775,  and  a  very  minute  account 
of  both  families  in  Davy's  3ISS.  in  the  British  Museum. 

The  following  is  extracted  from  Topcliffe's  letter  giving  an  account  of 
this  Royal  Progress,  'and  is  too  characteristic  to  be  omitted  here. 
Topcliffe's  spelling  is  so  original  that  I  cannot  but  reproduce  it.  "  This 
Rookewoode  is  a  Papyste  of  kynde  newly  crept  out  of  his  layt  warde- 
shipp.  Her  Ma'y,  by  some  meancs  I  know  not,  was  lodged  at  his  house, 
Ewston,  farre  unmeet  for  her  Highness,  but  fitter  for  the  blacke  garde  ; 
nevertheles  (the  gentilman  brought  into  her  Ma'y'^  presence  by  lyke 
device)  her  excell*  Ma*y  gave  to  Rookewoode  ordenary  thanks  for  his  badd 
house,  and  her  fayre  hand  to  kysse ;  after  vf^^  it  was  brayved  at :  But 
my  Lo.  Chamberlayn,  noblye  and  gravely  understandinge  that  Rooke- 
woode was  excommunicated  for  Papistrie,  cawled  him  before  him ; 
demanded  of  him  how  he  durst  presume  to  attempt  her  reall  presence, 
he,  unfytt  to  accompany  any  Chrystyan  person  ;  forthewith  sayd  he  was 
fytter  for  a  pay  re  of  stocks  ;  comanded  hym  out  of  the  Coort,  and  yet  to 
attende  her  Counsell's  pleasure  ;  and  at  Norwycbe  he  was  comytted. 
And,  to  dissyffer  the  gent,  to  the  full ;  a  peyce  of  plaite  being  missed 
in  the  Coorte,  and  serched  for  in  his  hay  house,  in  the  hay  rycke  suche 
an  immaydge  of  o""  Lady  was  ther  fownd,  as  for  greatnes,  for  gayness, 
and  woorkemanshipp,  I  did  never  see  a  matche ;  and,  after  a  sort  of 
cuntree  daunces  ended,  in  her  Ma^y'^  sighte  the  idoll  was  sett  behinde  the 
people,  who  avoyeded :  She  rather  seemed  a  beast,  raysed  uppon  a 
sudden  from  hell  by  conjewringe,  than  the  picture  for  whome  it  had 
bene  so  often  and  longe  abused.  Her  Ma^y  comanded  it  to  the  fyer,  w*^^ 
in  her  sight  by  the  cuntrie  folks  was  quickly  done,  to  her  content,  and 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  107 


unspeakable  joy  of  every  one  bat  some  one  or  two  who  had  sucked  of  the 
idoll's  poysoned  mylke." 

8.  Page  94,  She  was  the  daughter  of  George  Perient,  Gent.,  of 
Digswell,  CO.  Hertford,  and  widow  of  Sir  Humphrey  Style  of  Bekenham, 
CO.  Kent.  Thomas  Townshend,  Esq.,  was  son  and  heir  of  Sir  Robert 
TowNSHEND,  Knt.,  Chief-Justice  of  Chester.  Meegate  Hall,  where 
Queen  Elizabeth  dined,  is  still  a  house  of  some  pretension,  and  part  of 
the  old  oak  avenue  down  which  the  Queen  rode  remains,  though  the 
hand  of  time  is  upon  the  trees,  and  they  are  dying  fast.  Captain  Lacon, 
the  present  occupant  of  the  house,  tells  me  that  there  is  still  a  tradition 
of  one  of  the  rooms  having  been  inhabited  by  a  priest.  There  are  some 
indications  of  the  house  having  been  at  one  time  larger  than  it  is  now, 
but  it  was  not  necessary  that  a  house  in  which  the  Queen  dined  should 
be  one  of  any  great  size.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  on  the  occasion 
of  these  "Progresses"  the  royal  retinue  were  usually  compelled  to 
encamp  in  the  neighbourhood  of  a  halting-place.  These  royal  visits 
were  a  dreadful  infliction  upon  any  but  the  very  rich  gentry:  even  so 
considerable  a  person  as  Sir  William  More  of  Losely  spared  no  pains  to 
get  relieved  from  the  costly  and  burdensome  honour,  and  in  the  Losely 
MSS.f  Kemp,  p.  265  et  seq.,  are  several  letters  on  the  subject. 

Lady  Style  died  in  January  1580,  but  five  years  after  her  death  I  find 
her  name  on  a  list  of  recusants  "  dead  and  not  resident  in  Norff."  There 
was  another  Thomas  Townshend  living  at  Wearham,  who  with  his  wife, 
Marian  Townshend,  was  presented  to  the  bishop  as  a  recusant  in  June 
1597,  and  frequently  afterwards.  They  were  living  at  Wearham  in  the 
second  year  of  James  I.  ;  and  his  son  [?]  Thomas  is  returned  as  late  as 
20  Charles  1.,  when  he  paid  £6  IBs.  4d.  for  recusancy. — {MSS.  in  the 
Episcopal  Registry  at  Norwich,  and  Hecusant  Roll,  penes  me.)  The 
cousin  referred  to  in  the  text  was  Edmund  Townshend  of  Long  Stratton. 

9.  Page  95.  Blomefield's  account  of  the  Townshend  family  (vii. 
132)  is  hopelessly  confused  and  full  of  inaccuracies.  He  makes  this 
Thomas  to  be  son  of  a  Henry  Townshend  (ii.  84) ;  he  was  really  son  and 
heir  of  Sir  Robert  Townshend  of  Ludlow,  co.  Salop.  There  is  a  good 
account  of  him,  and  a  tolerably  successful  attempt  to  unravel  Blome- 
field's tangle,  by  an  American  gentleman,  Mr.  Charles  Hervey  Townshend 
of  New  Haven,  Connecticut,  in  the  New  England  Historic  Genealogical 
Register  for  January  1875.  Some  light  is  thrown  upon  Mr.  Townshend's 
state  and  lordly  way  of  life  by  the  will  of  Richard  Walpole  {supra, 
p.  49,  1.  19),  who  in  his  will,  dated  20th  March,  1568-9,  leaves  behind  him 
a  considerable  estate,  and  among  other  legacies  bequeaths  "  to  my  good 
master,  Thomas  Townshend,  Esquire,  in  token  of  my  poor  heart  and 
duty,  a  piece  of  gold  of  thirty  shillings,  and  another  piece  of  gold  of  lyke 
value  to  my  good  lady  my  mistress.  Item,  I  give  to  master  Roger 
Townshend  my  master  his  son  £10  to  make  him  a  little  chain  withal  in 


io8  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


remembrance  of  me.  .  .  .  Item,  To  Thomas  Baeker  my  fellow  in  house- 
hold ten  shillings."  He  leaves  his  brother,  Terry  Walpole,  and 
Thomas  Townshend,  Esq.,  his  executors.  It  is  clear  that  he  and  Thomas 
Barker  were  gentlemen  in  ^vaiting  to  Mr.  Townshend.  In  the  sixteenth 
century  this  position  was  looked  upon  as  quite  an  honourable  position 
for  the  younger  sons  even  of  men  of  distinction. 

Thomas  Townshend  of  Eaynham,  son  and  heir  of  Thomas  Townshend 
of  Braconash,  was  admitted  at  the  Inner  Temple,  1595-6. 

10.  Page  95.     This  daye  there  appeared  before  their  LL  as  warned 
by  the  Sheriff e  of  Norff.  by  authority  given  to  him  by  the  said  LL  .  .  . 

^iSic']  EOOKWOOD,  KOBERT  DOWNES,  HuMFREY  BeNINGFIELD  DE  QuIDENHAM, 

gent,  KoBERT  DE  Grey  de  Martin,  Esq.,  John  Downes  de  Boughton, 
gent.,  John  Drury  de  Goodwik',  gent.     And  being  sev'ally  called  one  by 
one,  the  Bishoppe  of  the  Diocesse  and  S""  Christopher  Heydon  and  S*^ 
Willam  Butts  Knights  being  pfit  they  were  particularly  charged  that 
contrary  to  all  good  Lawes  and  orders  and  against   the  dutie  of  good 
subjects  they  refused  to  come  to  the  Churche  at  the  tymes  of  prayer 
Sermons  and  other  Devine  s'vices.     Ev'y  one  of   them  confessed  y^  it 
was  true  that  they  did  absent  themselves  from  the  Churche  as  aforesaid. 
And  being  demaunded  by  their  LL  whither  they  wold  not  be  contented 
to  conforme  themselves  to  order,  and  like  good  subjects  to  come  to  the 
Church  ev'y  one  of  them  likewise  refused  so  to  do,  uppon  w^'^  their 
refusall  they  were  commanded  to  stand  apart.     And  after  their  LL  had 
thus  passed  throughe  them  all  and  had  conferred  w'^^  the  B.  to  under- 
stond  howe  many  of  them  had  ben  formerly  dealt  withall  to  be  induced 
to  conformitye  and  howe    many  not.     There   was    called    again  .  ,  . 
BoocKwooD  and  for  as  much  as  it  appeared  that  he  had  not  only  bene 
conferred  withal  but  for  his  continuance  in  y«^  case  stood  excommunicate, 
he  was  ordered  by  their  LL  to  be  committed  prison  to  the  Goale  of  the 
Countie  of  Norff.  there  to  remayne  w^'out  conference  saving  of  such  as 
shold  be  thought  meet  by  the  B.  either  for  his  better  instructions  or  for 
direction  of  his   necessary  businesses  of  his  living  and  family.     Next 
there  was  called  againe  Rob't  Downes,  and  for  that  it  appeared  that  he 
had  also  been  formly  dealt  w"'all  and  stood  obstinate,  it  was  ordered  that 
he  shold  be  committed  pison'  to  the  Goale  of  the  Citty  of  Norwich  to 
remaine   there    in   like    sorte   in  all   poynts    as  ...  .  Rockwood   was 
appoynted  to  remaine  in  the  goale  of  the  Countie.    And  where  it  appeared 
that  HuMFREY  Beningfield,  Rob't  de  Grey,  John  Downes,  John  Drury 
had  not  bene  aforetyme  dealt  with  by  the  B.  in  that  case  they  four  being 
called  altogether  before  their  LL  were  ordered  that  they  shold  ev'y  of 
them  enter  into  bonds  to  her  Ma^'^s  use  in  200"  a  peece,  that  they  shold 
not  depart  from  their  lodgings  appoynted  unto  them  in   the  Citty  of 
Norwich  and  that  they  shold  once  ev'y  day  as  often  as  they  shalbe  sent 
conferre  w"^  the  L.  B.  or  such  as  he  shall  appoynt   for   their  better 
Instructions  to  bring  them  to  conformitye. 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  109 


And  like  as  their  LL  required  the  L.  B.  to  use  all  good  meanes  that  he 
might  by  himself e  and  his  learned  Preachers  to  recov'  them  to  good 
order.  So  by  their  LL  he  was  authorized  that  in  case  he  shold  find  any 
of  them  willing  to  give  him  assurance  for  his  obedience  and  conformitye 
in  this  case,  that  they  were  charged  w'^  his  L.  shold  give  order  for  the 
deliv'aunce  of  any  such  as  shewed  himselfe  so  conformable.  And  on  the 
other  syde  if  they  w^'^  were  appoynted  to  remayne  within  the  Cittye  out 
of  the  Goales  do  not  before  the  feast  of  St.  Michaell  next  coming  yeld 
themselves  upon  such  instruction  as  shalbe  given  unto  them  to  con- 
formitie  and  be  contented  to  deliv'  assurance  to  the  B.  for  the  same,  His 
L.  by  this  order  shall  have  authoritie  to  committ  them  that  shall  stand 
so  obstinate  to  th'one  goale  or  th'other  at  his  discretion  there  to  remaine 
in  such  manfi  as  ...  .  Koockwood  and  Robert  Downes  are  appoynted 
to  do :  untill  uppon  their  reformation  he  shall  find  cause  of  their 
deliv'aunce,  and  he  shall  thereof  advertise  the  LL  of  the  Counsell  to 
receave  order  for  further  proceading  against  them. 

The  next  daye  following  there  were  called  before  their  LL  for  the  cause 
aforesaid  Tho.  Lovell  of  East  Harling,  Robf:rt  Lovell  de  Becham- 
WELL,  and  Ferdinando  Paris  de  Norton  Armig'  Who  standing  uppon 
like  obstinacye  were  in  like  sort  committed  to  remayne  at  their  lodginge 
in  the  Citty  of  Norw^^  as  Bebingfield  and  the  rest  were,  And  the  like 
bonds  taken  of  them  as  of  the  otheres  and  to  be  used  in  all  poyntes  as 
th'other. 

^The  L.  Treasurer        . 
The  L.  Chamberlaine 
The  E.  of  Warwicke 
The  presence  !  The  E.  of  Leycester 
of  i  S--  Chr.  Hatton 

S*-  Era.  Knollys 
S""  James  Crofte 
\M^  Seer.  Wilson 

(Endorsed.)     An  order  taken  by  the  LL  touching  the  Recusants 
in  Norff.     22  August,  1578. 

Cotton  MSS.  Titus,  B.  iii.  No.  66. 

11,  Page  95.  Nichols'  Progresses  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  ii.  p.  132.  The 
verses  presented  by  Downes  to  Queen  Elizabeth  are  given  in  the  Norf. 
and  Nor%v.  Arch.  Orig.  Papers,  vol.  iii.  p.  214.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at  that  Nichols  should  have  made  the  mistake  he  has  made  in  the 
Christian  names  of  the  Downes  family ;  trusting  as  he  did  to  Blomefield, 
he  could  hardly  avoid  being  led  astray,  for  here  Blomefield  exhibits  inextric- 
able confusion.  Robert  Downes  was  of  Great  Melton,  Esq.  By  his  wife 
Dorothy  he  had  a  son  Edward,  who  was  baptized  6th  April,  1574  (P.R.), 
and  a  daughter  Bridget,  who  with  her  mother  is  returned  upon  the 
Recusant  Rolls  as  owing  money  for  recusancy  in  1597,    This  Robert 


at  the  making 
of  the  said  order. 


no  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

appears  to  have  had  a  brother  John,  who  is  presented  for  recusancy  while 
living  at  Babingley  from  1592  till  1603.  In  his  offer  of  compounding 
for  his  fines  in  1585,  he  describes  himself  as  "  a  poor  younger  brother." 
EoBERT  DowNES,  who  Suffered  such  hard  treatment  in  1578,  built  Great 
Melton  Hall,  in  which  the  Rev.  H.  Evans  Lombe  now  resides  (Blome- 
field,  V.  21),  and  was  a  man  of  large  property  in  the  county.  Blomefield 
says  that  his  son  Edward  married  Catherine,  relict  of  Sir  Thos.  Knyvett 
of  Buckenham  Castle.  Lady  Knyvett  is  presented  for  recusancy  in 
1597,  being  then  described  as  wife  of  Edward  Downes,  Esq.,  of  Bucken- 
ham, when  she  must  have  been  a  woman  of  forty  at  least.  Melton  Hall 
must  have  been  in  Queen  Elizabeth's  time  one  of  the  noblest  mansions 
in  the  county,  but  its  first  owner  was  so  impoverished  by  the  remorseless 
exactions  levied  upon  him  that  he  was  compelled  to  sell  the  estate  in 
1609.  It  seems  that  the  purchaser,  Thos.  Anguish,  bought  the  house 
with  all  its  contents,  for  there  was  still  to  be  seen  a  bedstead  of  Mr. 
Downes's  in  the  house  in  Blomefield 's  time  (Bl.,  v.  21).  Mr.  Downes  was 
in  the  city  jail  at  Norwich  in  1580,  where  he  was  incarcerated  with 
Michael  Hare  of  Stow  Bardolph,  Roger  Martin  of  Long  Melford,  co. 
Suffolk,  Humphrey  Bedingfield  of  Quidenham,  and  Edward  Sulyard, 
Esqs.  The  five  gentlemen  "had  a  common  chamber  and  table,  where 
they  met  and  eat  their  meals  together."  Strype  tells  a  very  curious 
story  of  Mr.  Downes  receiving  a  letter  from  a  certain  Solomon  Eldred 
at  Rome,  urging  him  to  leave  England  and  come  to  Italy,  where  he 
would  be  received  with  distinction,  &c.  The  gentlemen  "  could  not  but 
laugh,  and  it  became  some  matter  of  mirth  to  them."  They  appear  to 
have  taken  to  romping,  and  at  last  Downes  snatched  the  letter  out  of 
Mr.  Hare's  hand  and  threw  it  in  the  fire.  "This  presently  made  a 
noise,  and  the  report  came  to  the  Bishop's  ears."  The  affair  ended  by  an 
inquiry  which  resulted  in  some  letters  and  statements  signed  by  the 
gentlemen  being  sent  to  the  bishop,  copies  of  which  may  be  read  in 
Strype,  AnnaU,  II.  ii.  343  and  676. 

12.  Fage  97.  See  the  pitiful  account  in  Morris's  Condition  of  Catholics 
under  James  I.,  pp.  35-9.  See,  too,  Lingard,  vi.  162;  but  instances 
might  be  adduced  by  the  score.  The  third  volume  of  Tierney's  Dodd 
may  be  referred  to  as  easily  accessible,  but  by  far  the  most  complete 
account  of  the  suffering  of  the  Catholics  in  Queen  Elizabeth's  reign,  until 
the  appearance  of  Mr.  Morris's  Troubles  of  our  Catholic  Forefathers,  was 
to  be  found  in  Yepez ,  Historia  Particular  de  la  Persecusion  de  Inglaterra, 
published  at  Madrid  in  1596. 

13.  Page  97.  See  Froude,  vol.  ix.  p.  515.  The  authority  for  the 
statements  in  the  text  are  to  be  found  among  the  MSS.  at  the  Record 
Office,  Domestic,  Elizabeth,  vol.  Ixxv.  n.  31,  vol.  xcii.  n.  31. 

14.  Page  97.  The  affidavits  and  correspondence  bearing  upon  this 
dreadful  business  are  to  be  seen  in  Harleian  MSS.  6998,  n.  19.    A  little 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  in 


while  after  this  Topoliffe  compelled  his  servant,  one  Nicholas  Jones,  to 
marry  the  girl,  and  when  her  father  refused  to  settle  a  manor  upon  her 
as  a  jointure  he  kept  the  wretched  man  in  prison  for  upwards  of  ten 
years,  persecuting  him  with  extreme  barbarity. — Lamdowne  MSS.  Ixxiii. 
art.  47.     Tierney's  Dodd,  vol.  iii.  App.  p.  197. 

15.  Page  98.  Stonyhurst  MSS.  Angl.  A.  n.  83.  It  appears  by  Harleian 
MSS.  6998,  n.  50,  that  the  bond  was  for  £3,000. 

16.  Page  98.  Harleian  MSS.  u.s.  p.  185.  The  editor  of  the  Harleian 
Catalogue,  who  usually  describes  minutely  the  contents  of  every  docu- 
ment contained  In  the  several  volumes,  dismisses  this  one  with  a  notice 
of  six  lines,  though,  as  he  tells  us,  "  the  book  contains  251  leaves." 

17.  Page  98.     Challoner's  Missionary  Priests,  i.  361. 

18.  Page  98.  Topcliffe's  name  became  in  his  own  days  a  byword. 
See  the  following  letter  from  Standen  to  Anthony  Bacon,  2nd  March, 
1593-4.  "...  Yet  thanks  be  to  God  his  [Eobert,  Earl  of  Essex] 
carriage  hath  been  such  now,  as  her  Majesty  hath  found  the  rareness 
of  his  parts,  and  all  with  such  mildness  and  affability,  contrary  to  our 
Topcliffian  customs,  as  he  hath  won  with  words  more  than  others  would 
ever  do  withracTcs.^' — Birch's  Elizabeth,  i.  160.  In  a  letter  to  Verstegan 
among  the  Bp.  of  Southwark's  MSS.  there  is  an  account  of  the  apprehen- 
sion of  Southwell.  The  writer  says,  ' '  Because  the  often  exercise  of  the 
rack  in  the  Tower  was  so  odious  and  so  much  spoken  of  of  the  people, 
Topcliffe  hath  authority  to  torment  priests  in  his  own  house  in  such  sort 
as  he  shall  think  good.  ..."  The  date  of  this  letter  is  3rd  August, 
1592. 

19.  Page  99.  There  is  a  list  of  them  given  in  Cardinal  Allen's  tract 
De  Justitia  Britannica,  but  it  is,  of  course,  very  incomplete. 

20.  Page  100.     See  Simpson's  Campion,  p.  45  et  seq. 

21.  Page  101.  Morris's  Troubles,  1st  series,  p.  61  et  seq. ;  Challoner's 
Miss.  Priests;  Lingard,  vol.  vi.  163.  For  the  number  of  ordinations 
my  authority  is  the  Douai  Diary,  lately  published  by  the  Fathers  of  the 
Oratory.  There  is  a  careful  account  of  the  various  colleges  and  semi- 
naries which  were  founded  for  the  English  Catholics  in  Tierney's  Dodd, 
and  a  brief  but  sufficient  one  in  the  Hon.  Edward  Petre's  Notices  of  the 
English  Colleges  and  Convents  Established  on  the  Continent.  The  book 
was  edited  by  the  late  Dr.  Husenbeth.     See,  too,  Lingard,  vi.  162. 

22.  Page  101.  See  the  remarkable  discussion  between  Archbishop 
Whitgift  and  Cartwright.  Answer  to  Admonition,  chap.  i.  div.  ix.  and 
div.  xi. ;  Whitgift's  Works,  Parker  Society ;   and  the  important  paper 


112     ONE   GENERATION  OF  A    NORFOLK  HOUSE 


quoted  by  Froude,  xi.  323,  n.  Parsons  {Responsio  ad  duo  Edicta)  treats 
this  subject  in  his  usual  caustic  fashion  and  with  his  usual  power.  While 
this  note  was  passing  through  the  press,  Harrison's  Description  of 
England  was  issued  by  the  New  Shakspere  Society.  His  account  at  page  3 
of  the  clergy  of  his  time  is  'in  their  favour,  but  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  his  own  words  at  page  21  represent  a  truer  state  of  the  case. 

23.  Page  101.     Simpson's  Campion,  pp.  163-4. 

24.  Page  102.  Commissioners'  Report  upon  the  Endowed  Schools, 
Chronological  Tables,  p.  36  et  seq.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  evident  that 
when  any  of  the  older  schools  in  out-of-the-way  districts  were  possessed 
of  landed  estates,  such  estates  were  by  no  means  safe  from  spoliation. 
A  flagrant  case  is  that  of  Sedbergh  School. — Baker's  History  of  St.  John^s, 
by  Professor  Mayor,  p.  371. 

25.  Page  102.  See  the  curious  instance  of  Brown  the  Separatist, 
East  Anglian,  vol.  i.  p.  180 ;  and  on  the  whole  subject,  Strype,  Annals, 
in.  i.  76.  Conspicuous  examples  of  the  favour  shown  to  schoolmasters 
are  Camden,  Simon  Hay  ward,  and  Mulcaster.  Many  others  might  be 
named. 

26.  Page  103.  "Von  Eaumer,  Geschichte  der  Padagogik,  Stuttgart,  1857. 

27.  Page  103.  "  The  liberal  education  of  youth  passed  almost  entirely 
into  their  hands,  and  was  conducted  by  them  with  conspicuous  ability. 
They  appear  to  have  discovered  the  precise  point  to  which  intellectual 
culture  can  be  carried  without  risk  of  intellectual  emancipation.  Enmity 
itself  was  compelled  to  own  that,  in  the  art  of  managing  and  forming 
the  tender  mind,  they  had  no  equals." — Macaulay,  History  of  England, 
c.  vi.  There  is  a  curious  notice  of  their  schools  in  Sir  Edwin  Sandys's 
Travels,  but  I  have  not  the  book  at  hand.  The  passage  in  Bacon  referred 
to  in  the  text  is  Advancement  of  Learning,  B.  I.  c.  iii.  §  4. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE    JESUIT    MISSION    TO    ENGLAND. 

"Not  only  the  number,  but  the  severity  of  these  laws,  is  very  con- 
siderable :  How  often  do  we  meet  with  new-minted  treasons,  and 
unaccountable  felonies  in  them?  Here  is  hanging,  drawing,  and 
quartering  ;  here  is  bridewelling,  banishing,  and  seUing  of  people  to 
slavery ;  here  is  forfeiting  of  lands,  goods,  common  right,  and  all  the 
natural  privileges  of  free-born  Englishmen ;  people  convicted  in  an 
arbitrary  way,  without  trial  by  their  peers ;  one  man  punished  for  the 
act  of  another.  The  poor  distressed  widow  and  the  helpless  orphan  not 
escaping  their  fury.  And  for  what  all  this?  Not  for  any  disloyalty, 
conspiracy,  or  disturbing  the  public  peace :  not  for  injuring  any  of  our 
neighbours  or  fellow-subjects :  for  nothing  criminal  by  any  law,  moral 
or  divine ;  but  only  for  worshipping  our  Almighty  Creator,  according 
to  our  light,  after  the  best  manner  we  can  (after  a  serious  inquiry) 
apprehend  to  be  acceptable  unto  Him.  Or  for  not  joining  in  certain 
rituals  and  ceremonies,  which  the  imposers  themselves  confess  to  be 
indifferent,  and  the  dissenters  conceive  to  be  either  sinful  or  unwarrant- 
able."— Henry  Care's  Draconica  [1688]. 

The  Bull  of  Pope  Paul  III.,  Begimini  militantis  EcclesicB, 
which  confirmed  the  Society  of  Jesus,  was  published  on  the 
27th  September,  1540.  So  little  did  men  anticipate  the 
importance  and  magnitude  of  the  work  that  the  new  Order 
was  destined  to  do,  and  the  wonderful  part  which  it  was  to 
play  in  the  history  of  the  world,  that  the  new  Society  was 
expressly  limited  at  first  to  sixty  members,  and  not  till  a 
new  Bull  (Injiinctum  nobis)  was  promulgated  three  years 
later  was  this  limit  exceeded.  The  Society  in  the  first 
years  of  its  activity  numbered  few  Englishmen  among  its 
fathers,  and  the  only  one  who  appears  to  have  been  admitted 
during  Loyola's  lifetime  was  Thomas  Lith,  a  Londoner,  of 

8  "3 


114  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


whom  we  know  no  more  than  that  he  was  received,  probably 
as  a  Novice,  in  June  1555.^ 

St.  Ignatius  died  in  the  following  year,  having  survived 
four  of  his  original  associates,  and  leaving  behind  him  five 
(and  these  by  far  the  most  learned)  apostles  of  the  new 
Order.  It  was  not  till  after  Queen  Mary's  death  had 
driven  across  the  Channel  that  army  of  scholars  and 
enthusiasts,  upon  whom  the  rigour  of  Elizabeth's  enact- 
ments pressed  so  hard,  that  the  Jesuits'  ranks  were  at  all 
recruited  from  England.  During  the  first  ten  years  of  the 
Catholic  exodus  I  find  between  twenty  and  thirty  names 
admitted  to  the  Society,  though,  with  the  exception  of  those 
of  Eliseus  and  Jasper  Heywood,  there  is  scarcely  one  which 
is  anything  more  than  a  name.^  Though  it  be  indisputable 
that  the  excommunication  of  the  Queen,  followed  as  it  was 
by  the  events  alluded  to  in  the  previous  chapter,  produced 
upon  the  townsfolk  and  the  great  middle  class  precisely  the 
contrary  effect  to  that  which  was  hoped  and  intended,  yet 
among  the  Academics  of  either  university,  and  among  the 
more  highly  educated  of  the  youth  of  England,  the  perplexity 
was  considerable.  The  young  scholars  of  Oxford  were  still 
trained  in  a  great  measure  according  to  the  old  fashion. 
Anglican  theology  had  as  yet  no  existence.  Hooker  had 
not  written  a  line.  Andrewes  was  lecturing  to  crowded 
audiences  at  Cambridge,  but  his  fame  was  but  beginning. 
Jewel,  the  great  anti-papal  champion,  had  died  in  1571, 
leaving  no  one  who  was  at  all  qualified  to  take  his  place ; 
and  though  he  had  left  a  valuable  legacy  behind  him  in  his 
Apology^  yet  that  work  was  only  an  apology  after  all,  and 
from  its  negative  character  and  the  unimpassioned  style  of 
its  composition  it  could  never  convince  any  one,  still  less 
"  carry  away  "  a  reader. 

Meanwhile  the  other  side  were  exhibiting  a  dialectic 
ability  which  has  rarely  been  surpassed.  Young  men, 
whose  intellects  were  alert,  excited,  and  eager,  plunged  into 
the  great  questions  of  the  day  with  a  zest  which  was  apt  to 
lead  them  on  to  side  with  the  persecuted  party.  The  fact 
that  the  plebeian  was  given  over  to  Calvin  and  Puritanism 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  115 


was  reason  enough  to  make  the  "gentleman"  lean  to 
the  Eomish  cause.  When  he  looked  about  for  sources  of 
information  on  the  great  questions  at  issue,  he  preferred  to 
bury  himself  in  the  elaborate  treatises  of  Laynez  or 
Salmeron,  composed  in  the  scholars'  own  language,  or  to 
read  what  Bristowe  or  that  great  master  of  Latin,  Stapleton,3 
had  to  say  in  periods  which  did  not  jar  against  the  fastidious 
Ciceronian 's  ear.  He  left  to  the  "  mob  "  the  cumbrous 
heaviness  of  Fulke  and  Cranmer.  Then,  as  now,  the 
members  of  the  common  room  were  of  the  Pharisees'  mind 
— "  this  people  that  knoweth  not  the  law  are  cursed."  And 
thus  it  came  to  pass  that  notwithstanding  all  the  errors 
and  crimes  of  the  Catholic  party  at  home  and  abroad,  not- 
withstanding that  every  career  was  sternly  barred  to  the 
ambitious  Academic  who  had  any  fond  clinging  to  the  old 
learning,  and  was  not  prepared  to  throw  himself  heart  and 
soul  into  the  party  of  progress  and  theological  revolution, 
there  yet  was  a  very  numerous  minority  whose  sympathies 
were  wholly  with  the  Eoman  divines,  and  who  were 
preparing  themselves  silently  and  unconsciously  for  great 
sacrifices  when  they  should  be  called  on  finally  to  make 
their  choice. 

Such  men  were  William  Holt  of  Oriel,  Henry  Garnet  and 
John  Pits  of  New  College,  and,  among  those  elders  whose 
university  position  was  established  and  their  reputation 
made,  Gregory  Martin  and  Edmund  Campion  of  St.  John's, 
and  Robert  Parsons  of  Balliol.  Any  party  that  had  won 
over  from  its  opponents  such  adherents  as  these  in  the 
course  of  a  year  or  two  might  be  pardoned  a  little  exultation 
in  its  tone  ;  and  however  remarkable  these  converts  were, 
and  however  conspicuous  for  learning,  culture,  and  ability, 
they  were  but  the  representatives  of  a  much  larger  band 
of  zealots,  who  were  ready  to  follow  wherever  they  led. 
Prominent  among  them  all,  not  so  much  for  his  learning 
or  eloquence  as  for  a  dauntless  force  of  character,  which 
compelled  submission  to  his  will,  was  Robert  Parsons, 
fellow  of  Balliol.  Of  plebeian  birth — calumny  was  loud  in 
asserting  something  more — he  was  early  taken  by  the  hand 


ii6  ONE   GENERATION  OF 


by  his  uncle,  "a  virtuous  good  priest,"  named  James 
Hayward,  Vicar  of  Nether  Stowey,  and  sent  to  Balliol,  of 
which  college  he  became  fellow,  and  eventually  Bursar  and 
Dean.  At  Oxford  he  had  won  a  high  reputation  as  an  able 
and  successful  tutor,  though  in  his  own  college  there  were 
those  who  watched  him  with  jealousy  and  suspicion.  A 
formidable  disputant,  unsparing  in  conflict  and  incapable  of 
tolerating  contradiction,  he  was  one  of  those  who  are  born 
to  rule,  who  when  they  occupy  any  position  but  the  highest 
become  arrogant  and  domineering  by  their  excess  of  energy, 
and  who  rarely  fail  to  get  themselves  the  implacable  hatred 
of  their  opponents.  The  life  of  Eobert  Parsons  has  not  yet 
been  written :  his  career  and  character  demand  a  more 
careful  study  than  they  have  yet  received,  and  the  place 
which  he  filled  in  the  history  of  his  time  has  been  very 
much  under-estimated  by  historians  ;  but  his  is  a  career 
perplexing  to  follow  and  a  character  difficult  to  estimate : 
the  salient  points  are  his  enormous  capacity  of  work,  his 
rugged  directness  of  style,  the  ferocious  violence  of  his 
rhetoric,  and  yet  withal  a  certain  vein  of  rollicking  humour, 
the  expression  of  that  amazing  exuberance  of  vigour  which 
marks  him  as  one  of  the  Titans  of  his  age.  Side  by  side  with 
some  coarseness  in  the  grain  and  no  little  vulgarity  in  the 
manner  of  the  man,  with  a  combativeness  that  repelled  and 
irritated  but  never  convinced,  there  were  associated  some 
very  lofty  and  noble  qualities.  He  was  a  courtier,  whose 
success  was  patent  to  all ;  his  ascendancy  over  Philip  II. 
was  unbounded ;  his  influence  at  Eome  was  scarcely  less 
than  at  the  Escurial ;  the  English  Jesuits,  for  a  time,  he 
seems  to  have  held  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand ;  we  shall 
mistake  him  much  if  we  think  of  him  as  a  mere  man  of  the 
world,  animated  by  any  mean  and  common  ambition.  If 
there  ever  were  a  real  enthusiast,  absorbed  by  a  genuine 
fanaticism  in  a  cause  which  he  believed  to  be  the  cause 
of  God,  Robert  Parsons  was  one  ;  mere  petty  selfishness 
appears  to  have  been  a  vice  he  could  not  understand.  Nor 
was  this  all :  he  was  a  pietist  of  the  most  ecstatic  school. 
His  Christian  Directory  was,  for  a  century  at  least,  one  of 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  117 

the  most  popular  and  widely  circulated  religious  manuals  in 
Europe,  and  was  the  book  which  made  so  deep  an  impres- 
sion upon  Kichard  Baxter  that  he  dated  the  beginning  of 
his  religious  life  from  the  time  when  he  first  became 
awakened  by  its  fervid  and  soul-stirring  appeal  to  the 
conscience.  In  the  next  century,  too,  a  very  different  man, 
Edward  Gibbon,  confessed  to  his  kinsman  Lord  Sheffield 
that  Parsons'  Three  Conversions  had  been  the  means  of 
converting  him  to  become  a  Catholic.  And  yet,  with  all 
his  prodigious  force  and  vehemence,  and  with  all  the 
immense  agencies  which  he  had  at  his  command.  Parsons' 
generalship  was  flagrantly  bad.  Restlessly  aggressive,  he 
never  seemed  to  be  able  to  understand  what  conciliation 
meant :  he  would  have  all  or  nothing  ;  he  could  never  bide 
his  time  ;  he  could  never  temporise  ;  he  could  never  even 
economise  his  resources.  Knowing  as  he  did  that  for  a 
Jesuit  father  to  land  in  England  during  the  latter  years  of 
Queen  Elizabeth's  reign  was  to  court  almost  certain  death, 
he  yet  hurled  man  after  man  against  the  hosts  that  were 
waiting  for  them,  with  a  recklessness  almost  horrible  to 
recall.  We  are  tempted  to  regard  him  as  a  monomaniac, 
mastered  by  an  idea  which  had  got  such  entire  possession 
of  his  whole  nature  that  his  judgment  was  not  only  per- 
verted but  even  smitten  with  the  blindness  of  insanity. 
What  was  that  idea?  To  me  it  seems  Parsons'  delusion 
was  that  the  English  Jesuits  were  destined  to  reconvert 
England,  and  to  hand  back  to  the  Papacy  a  nation  saved 
from  "  heresy,"  humbled  by  remorse,  and  seeking  reconcile- 
ment once  again  on  bended  knees  at  the  hands  of  the 
Bishop  of  Rome.  A  delusion  indeed  !  but  such  a  delusion 
as  no  logic  of  facts  could  dispel.  Facts,  however  strong, 
were  lost  upon  him,  just  because  of  the  strength  of  that 
delusion.  But  let  no  man  attempt  to  understand  Parsons' 
enormous  blunders,  or  his  desperate  ventures,  or  his 
extravagant  arrogance,  on  the  hypothesis  of  his  being  a  cool 
politician,  with  far-sighted  sagacity  and  astute  diplomacy, — 
these  things  were  exactly  what  he  was  deficient  in.  Say 
rather  he  was  a  passionate  partisan,  without  a  glimmer  of 


ii8  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

sentiment,  without  romance,  with  few  moments  of  tender- 
ness or  pity,  and  absolutely  deficient  in  those  qualities 
which  are  the  main  constituents  of  the  poetic  temperament. 
Such  characters  may  be  titanic,  audacious,  terrible,  but 
nations  and  men  are  not  converted  by  them ;  and  in  the 
great  conflict  of  opinions,  in  that  "  bridal  dawn  of  thunder 
peals,"  when  the  deepest  convictions  of  mankind  are  to  be 
reached  and  swayed,  the  enthusiasm  of  mere  obstinate 
determination  repels  and  scares,  it  is  the  enthusiasm  of  love 
and  self-sacrifice  which  prevails.^ 

A  very  different  man  was  Edmund  Campion  of  St. 
John's.  He  too  could  boast  but  little  of  his  birth.  His 
father,  we  are  told,  was  a  bookseller  and  citizen  of  London, 
a  man  of  no  large  means,  though  there  is  some  reason 
to  believe  he  was  connected  by  marriage  with  people  who 
moved  in  a  higher  social  circle  than  his  own.  He  had 
given  early  promise  of  remarkable  ability,  was  sent  to 
Oxford,  and  became  in  process  of  time  fellow  of  St.  John's 
College.  Here  he  gained  for  himself  the  character  of 
being  the  most  brilliant  scholar  in  the  university — con- 
spicuous for  his  extraordinary  readiness  in  debate,  and 
for  oratorical  powers  of  a  very  high  order.  When  Amy 
Robsart's  funeral  was  celebrated  at  St.  Mary's  in  1560, 
Campion,  though  little  more  than  twenty  years  of  age, 
was  one  of  those  chosen  to  pronounce  a  funeral  oration 
in  her  honour ;  five  years  later  he  performed  the  same 
task  at  the  funeral  of  Sir  Thomas  White,  the  founder  of 
his  college ;  and  when,  in  1566,  Queen  Elizabeth  paid  her 
visit  to  Oxford,  Campion  was  one  of  those  chosen  to 
"dispute"  before  the  Queen,  and  acquitted  himself  so  well 
that  he  made  a  very  favourable  impression,  and  attracted 
the  special  notice  of  her  Majesty,  who  commended  him  to 
the  patronage  of  Leicester,  while  even  Cecil  admired  and 
applauded.  He  was  Proctor  in  1568,  but  by  this  time  his 
position  at  the  university  had  become  untenable.  The 
oath  of  allegiance  was  pressed  upon  him  ;  he  took  it,  but 
his  conscience  would  not  suffer  him  to  be  at  ease.  Scruples 
crowded   upon   him   till  he  could  find   no   peace.     Under 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  119 

the  protection  of  Sir  Henry  Sidney,  the  Lord-Deputy,  he 
crossed  over  to  Ireland  ;  but  he  was  a  marked  man.  The 
pursuivants  were  soon  let  loose  upon  him.  He  managed 
to  elude  their  vigilance,  and  after  one  or  two  narrow 
escapes  he  succeeded  in  crossing  over  to  Calais,  in  the 
summer  of  1571.  Making  his  way  to  Douay,  he  remained 
for  a  year  at  the  new  college,  and  then  set  out  for  Eome. 
Next  year  he  offered  himself  to  the  Society  of  Jesus  and 
was  at  once  accepted.  For  the  next  four  years  his  sphere 
of  labour  was  in  Bohemia. 

It  had  been  for  some  time  a  scheme  of  the  Court  party 
in  Bohemia  to  revive  the  waning  glory  of  the  University 
of  Prague,  and  by  its  instrumentality,  through  the  Jesuits, 
to  recover  for  the  Pope  the  ascendancy  which  had  been 
lost  since  the  days  of  Huss  and  Jerome.  The  emperor, 
Eudolph  II.,  and  his  mother  the  dowager  empress,  sister 
of  Philip  II.  and  mother  of  his  fourth  wife,  was  deeply 
interested  in  the  success  of  the  plan,  and  spared  no  pains 
to  bring  it  about.  Campion  was  appointed  Professor  of 
Ehetoric,  and  became  the  leading  spirit  of  the  university. 
He  threw  himself  with  ardour  into  his  work,  and  won 
for  himself  on  all  sides  admiration,  affection,  and  esteem. 
The  university  prospered,  and  the  fame  of  the  English 
Professor  grew  and  travelled  far.  Young  Englishmen 
on  their  journeys  turned  from  the  beaten  track  to  confer 
with  the  exile,  whose  reputation  had  followed  him  from 
Oxford  to  the  distant  land.  Some  came  with  minds  dis- 
turbed by  doubts  and  questioning;  some  from  mere 
curiosity  ;  one,  Sir  Philip  Sydney,  the  pearl  of  English 
chivalry,  to  renew  an  old  acquaintance,  and  to  exchange 
kind  courtesies  with  his  father's  friend.  But  Bohemia 
was,  after  all,  a  banishment,  and  Campion  could  not  be 
left  to  spend  his  life  there,  though  in  the  sunshine  of  a 
court.  This  was  mere  trifling:  there  was  something  greater 
for  him  to  do;  let  scholars  and  students  teach  the  lads 
in  the  lecture-room,  the  martyr's  crown  was  meant  for 
other  brows.  In  December  1579  Campion  was  summoned 
to  Rome. 


I20  ONE   GENERATION  OF 


In  the  summer  of  that  year  Dr.  Allen  had  been  disturbed 
by  tidings  regarding  the  state  of  affairs  in  the  English 
College  at  Eome,  which  moved  him  to  set  out  for  that 
city.  In  the  College  there  had  been  serious  quarrels, 
and  the  scandal  which  these  had  aroused  had  been  made 
the  most  of  by  all  who  watched  the  doings  of  the  refugees 
with  jealousy  and  suspicion.  Dr.  Allen  came  as  a  peace- 
maker, and  his  mediation  was  effectual,  at  any  rate  for 
a  while ;  but  while  engaged  in  this  work,  the  thought 
which  had  long  been  slumbering  in  his  mind  acquired 
a  distinctness  and  power  which  no  longer  allowed  of  its 
remaining  inoperative,  and  he  arrived  at  last  at  the  con- 
viction that  the  time  had  come  when  an  effort  should 
be  made,  and  made  upon  a  large  scale,  for  recovering 
the  English  people  from  their  lapse  into  heresy  and  schism 
and  bringing  them  once  again  into  communion  with  the 
See  of  Eome. 

Hitherto,  as  I  have  said,  the  Jesuits  were  unknown 
in  England.  From  the  Continent  accounts  had  come  of 
their  immense  success  as  educational  reformers,  as  inde- 
fatigable missionaries,  as  proselytisers  whose  persuasive 
powers  were  said  to  be  almost  more  than  human.  They 
seemed  to  be  labouring  everywhere,  and  wherever  they 
came  they  prospered  unaccountably.  The  amazing  rapidity 
of  growth,  and  the  more  amazing  influence  exercised  by 
the  Society,  startled  and  perplexed  men  least  inclined  to 
be  scared  by  vague  rumours ;  and  all  over  Europe  the 
Protestant  reformers  began  to  ask  themselves  with  some 
anxiety  where  this  astonishing  ascendancy  of  the  new 
Order  was  to  end. 

When  Dr.  Allen  arrived  in  Rome  in  1579,  three  of 
St.  Ignatius'  original  associates  were  still  living — Simon 
Rodriguez,  who  died  at  Lisbon  in  the  August  of  this  year  ; 
Alphonsus  Salmeron,  then  about  sixty-four  years  old ; 
and  Nicholas  Bobadilla,  ten  years  his  senior ;  the  General 
of  the  Order  being  Everard  Mercurianus,  who  had  been 
elected  on  the  1st  October,  1572.  Campion  had  been 
his    first     "  Postulant,"    and     he    appears    to    have    felt 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  121 

a  special  interest  in  English  ! affairs.  When  Dr.  Allen 
began  to  urge  the  necessity  of  a  mission  to  England,  he 
did  not  lack  supporters  nor  cogent  arguments.  '  Had  not 
the  priests  of  his  own  seminaries  shown  a  noble  example 
of  heroism  and  courageous  self-sacrifice  ?  Could  they  not 
already  boast  of  their  martyrs  ?  Had  not  Cuthbert  Mayne 
obtained  for  himself  the  crown  that  fadeth  not  away,  and 
were  there  not  multitudes  who  were  ready  to  follow  his 
steps  ?  What  had  the  Jesuits  done  for  England  that  could 
compare  with  the  labours  of  the  Seminarists  ?  They  had 
written  enough  ;  let  them  practise  as  they  preached."  But 
wilier  counsellors  took  a  different  view  of  the  situation  ; 
they  doubted  whether  the  Jesuit  training  was  exactly  the 
best  to  prepare  men  for  the  rough  work  w^hich  the  more 
fanatical  Seminary  priests  were  doing,  on  the  whole,  so 
successfully.  They  hesitated  to  send  away  men  of  high 
culture  and  great  gifts  to  run  the  gauntlet  of  spies  and 
informers,  to  slink  into  hiding-places  and  assume  disguises, 
to  resort  to  every  kind  of  cunning  trick  for  baffling  the 
vigilance  of  coarse  and  brutal  detectives.  If  the  Seminarists 
did  not  shrink  from  these  things,  it  did  not  follow  that 
the  Jesuits  were  called  upon  to  emulate  them.  The 
Church  could  not  afford  to  squander  such  precious  material 
in  times  like  these,  and  the  experiment  was  too  hazardous 
to  justify  the  cost  of  the  venture.  But  the  counsels  of 
Dr.  Allen  and  his  supporters  prevailed,  and  before  the 
spring  of  1580  Pope  Gregory  XIII.  had  been  induced  to 
sanction  the  new  crusade.  It  was  decided  that  the  Society 
of  Jesus  should  take  its  part  in  a  mission  to  England. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  enter  minutely  into  the  history 
of  the  strange  expedition  which  started  from  Eome  on 
the  18th  April,  1580  ;  and  the  less  needful,  as  it  has  been 
told  once  for  all  by  Campion's  English  biographer. 

The  whole  company  numbered,  it  seems,  fourteen,  and 
at  its  starting  was  led  by  Bishop  Goldw^ell  of  St.  Asaph, 
Laurence  Vaux,  the  Prior  of  Manchester,  Dr.  Morton, 
Penitentiary  of  St.  Peter's,  and  four  old  priests  from  the 
English  Hospital  at  Kome.     These,  however,  never  crossed 


122  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

the  Channel.  It  was  soon  found  that  men  far  advanced 
in  life,  though  they  might  give  a  certain  dignity  and 
importance  to  the  expedition,  were  not  fitted  for  the 
labours  and  dangers  which  had  to  be  encountered ;  and  the 
real  "  missioners  "  were  the  Jesuit  Fathers  and  the  younger 
priests  from  Cardinal  Allen's  colleges,  who  were  associated 
with  them  as  fellow-workers. 

From  the  first  Father  Parsons  was  the  manager  and 
moving  spirit  of  the  little  band.  Of  commanding  stature 
and  big  of  bone,  never  losing  his  presence  of  mind,  ready 
of  speech  and  perfectly  fearless,  always  cheerful  and 
fertile  in  resource,  he  proved  himself  on  every  occasion  an 
able  leader,  whom  others  might  trust  without  hesitation 
and  follow  without  misgiving,  s  Campion  was  the  preacher 
and  pietist,  whose  place  was  in  the  pulpit  or  the  professor's 
chair.  With  the  two  Jesuit  priests  there  went  a  Jesuit 
lay  brother,  Ealph  Emerson,  afterwards  apprehended  with 
Father  Weston,  ^  who  suffered  an  imprisonment  of  twenty 
years  for  his  companionship.  Their  departure  from  Rome 
was  celebrated  with  no  little  enthusiasm,  and,  though 
professedly  secret,  the  mission  was  actually  heralded  by 
rumour  all  over  Europe,  and  their  every  movement  was 
watched  by  English  spies.  They  marched  on  foot,  only 
the  old  and  feeble  using  horses  ;  and  on  the  whole  journey 
we  hear  that  Campion  rode  but  once.  They  passed  through 
Bologna,  Milan,  Turin ;  crossed  the  Alps  by  the  Mount 
Cenis,  and  at  Geneva  first  adopted  disguises.  But  their 
appearance  was  too  remarkable  to  escape  notice,  and  once 
they  were  in  some  danger  from  a  cry  arising  in  the  streets 
that  they  were  monks  or  priests.  The  temptation  to  beard 
Beza  in  his  study  was  too  great,  and  thither  Parsons  went, 
and  Campion  as  his  servant.  The  details  of  the  interview 
are  exceedingly  interesting — how  he  admitted  them  with 
reluctance — how  he  came  forth  at  last  "in  his  long  black 
gown  and  round  cap,  with  ruffs  about  his  neck,  and  his  fair 
long  beard,  and  saluted  them  courteously" — how  they 
tried  to  drag  him  into  an  argument  which  he  declined  to 
continue,  "  for  he  was  busy  " — and  how  at  last  the  old  man 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  123 


with  diflflculty  got  rid  of  bhem,  and  bowed  them  out  by  the 
help  of  his  wife.  But  the  lust  of  controversy  was  strong 
among  them,  and  with  a  somewhat  Quixotic  zeal  Parsons 
and  Campion  sent  poor  Beza  a  challenge  to  a  public 
disputation  which  never  came  off,  for  the  challenge  was 
never  delivered. 

The  Httle  band  arrived  at  St.  Omer's  in  the  beginning  of 
June,  and  here  they  learnt  that  the  Queen  of  England  had 
particular  information  of  their  movements,  and  had  issued 
proclamations  especially  directed  against  them  and  their 
plans.  This  and  other  serious  news  made  them  hesitate 
for  awhile ;  but  Parsons  was  not  to  be  turned  back,  and  by 
some  dexterous  diplomacy  he  managed  to  reassure  the 
rest,  and  to  bear  down  the  opposition  that  was  being 
made  to  any  advance.  Bishop  Goldwell,  who  was  verging 
on  eighty  years  of  age,  though  animated  with  all  the  zeal 
and  a  great  deal  of  the  energy  of  youth,  found  on  arriving 
at  Eheims  that  it  would  be  madness  for  him  to  continue 
the  journey.  His  health  had  suffered  already  from  the 
fatigues  of  the  last  two  months,  and  after  addressing  a 
letter  to  the  Pope,  and  stating  that,  in  view  of  his  intended 
journey  to  England  being  well  known  to  the  Government, 
it  would  be  difficult  and  dangerous  for  him  to  land,  but  yet 
if  the  Pope  ordered  him  he  was  still  prepared  to  go,  he 
reUnquished  the  attempt,  and  in  the  beginning  of  August 
returned  to  Eome.  ^  At  Rheims  the  company  separated 
into  five  smaller  bands,  each  intending  to  enter  England  by 
a  different  port.  There,  too,  another  Jesuit  Father,  Thomas 
Cottam,  joined  them,  so  that  there  were  three  Jesuit  Fathers 
and  one  lay  brother  in  all. 

Arrived  at  Calais,  Parsons  as  usual  took  the  lead,  and 
on  the  11th  June  he  crossed  over  to  Dover,  disguised  as 
a  soldier  from  the  Low  Countries,  his  ready  audacity  carry- 
ing him  almost  unchallenged  through  the  searchers  who 
were  actually  on  the  look  out  for  him  and  his  friends. 
Campion  did  not  cross  till  the  24th.  He  was  disguised  as 
a  merchant  of  jewels,  and  Emerson  passed  as  his  servant. 
Less  fortunate  than  Parsons,  he  was  stopped,  brought  before 


124  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

the  Mayor  of  Dover,  and  narrowly  escaped  being  sent  up 
to  the  Lords  of  the  Council;  but  the  Mayor  released  him, 
and  he  arrived  safely  at  last  at  the  house  of  the  Catholic 
Club  in  Chancery  Lane,  on  the  26th  June,  1580. 

Then  began  such  an  outburst  of  Catholic  fervour  as 
England  had  not  known  for  many  a  day.  The  researches 
of  Mr.  Simpson  have  disclosed  to  us  the  fact  that,  some 
time  before  the  arrival  of  Parsons  and  his  coadjutors,  a 
large  and  carefully  organised  society  had  been  formed, 
with  the  special  object  of  co-operating  with  the  missionary 
priests,  and  furnishing  them  the  means  of  carrying  on  their 
work.  A  number  of  young  men  of  property,  all  of  them 
belonging  to  the  upper  classes,  and  some  of  them  possessed 
of  great  wealth,  banded  themselves  together  to  devote  their 
time  and  substance  to  the  Catholic  cause,  and  to  act  as 
guides,  protectors,  and  supporters  of  the  priests  who  were 
coming  to  "reduce"  England.  We  know  the  names  of 
some  of  these  young  men,  but  it  is  quite  certain  that 
we  know  only  a  few ;  it  is  evident  that  Catholic  sym- 
pathisers were  very  much  more  numerous  than  has  been 
generally  believed.  Wherever  Campion  went  he  found  an 
eager  audience.  Five  days  after  his  landing  he  preached  in 
a  house  in  Smithfield,  which  had  been  hired  by  Lord  Paget, 
"gentlemen  of  worship  and  honour"  standing  at  the  doors 
and  guarding  the  approaches.  The  effect  of  the  sermon 
was  very  great,  the  audience  breaking  forth  into  tears  and 
expressions  of  strong  emotion.  Sanguine  people  began  to 
believe  that  their  fondest  dreams  would  be  realised,  and 
they  talked  wildly  and  foolishly.  The  Queen's  Council 
were  kept  informed  of  all  that  was  going  on ;  but  so 
powerful  was  the  combination  of  the  "  Comforters,"  as  they 
were  called,  that  though  the  spies  and  informers  did  their 
work  sedulously,  it  was  necessary  to  proceed  with  caution, 
and  not  precipitate  a  crisis.  Campion  continued  to  lurk 
about  London  and  the  neighbourhood  for  some  time  ;  his 
movements  were  watched,  but  for  the  present  it  seemed 
unadvisable  to  attempt  his  apprehension.  At  the  end  of 
August  he  was  persuaded  to  write  his  famous  Challenge, 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  125 

It  was  entrusted  to  a  Hampshire  gentleman  of  large  means, 
Pound  by  name,  who  at  one  time  had  been  a  courtier,  but, 
being  strongly  impressed  by  his  religious  convictions,  had 
retired   from   the    world,  and    given    himself    up    to    the 
exercises  of   devotion.     He  had  been  thrown  into  prison 
more  than  once  for  his  recusancy,  and  apparently,  whilst 
in  the  Marshalsea  in  1578,  had  applied  to  be  admitted  into 
the  Society  of  Jesus.     But  Pound  was  an  impulsive  person, 
and  very  soon  this  paper  of  Campion's  became  as   widely 
circulated  as  a  royal  proclamation.     Meanwhile   Campion 
had  left  London  and  was  wandering   about   the   country, 
handed  from  house  to  house  by  the  agency  of  the  Catholic 
Club,    and   carefully   watched   over    lest   the   pursuivants 
should  come  upon  him  unawares.     The  myrmidons  of  the 
law  were  outwitted  and  baffled,  the  Lords  of  the  Council 
became   irritated   and   angry;   proclamation   followed   pro- 
clamation, but  months  passed,  and  Parsons  and  Campion 
were  still  at  large.     The  Catholics  set  up  a  printing  press, 
and  published  one  book  after  another.     The    Government 
tried  their  utmost  to  lay  their  hands  upon  it,  but  in  vain. 
At  last  the  rack  was  resorted  to,  and  seven  of  those  who 
at  various  times  had  been  apprehended  during  the  Jesuits' 
campaign  were  cruelly  tortured  in  the  last  month  of  1580. 
But  marvellously  little  was  extorted  from  them.     Even  one 
of  the  printers  was  apprehended,  but  the   press  was   still 
undiscovered.     Campion  continued  his    labours,  preaching 
and  writing   incessantly,    Parsons    remaining    in   London 
under   the   protection   of    the    Spanish    ambassador,    who 
treated  him  as   one  of  his   own  retinue.     But    Campion's 
time  came  at  last,  and  on  Sunday,  the  16th  July,  1581,  he 
was    taken   at   Lyford    in    Berkshire,  just    after    he    had 
preached   to   a   congregation  of   more  than  sixty  persons, 
of  whom  a  large  proportion  were  young  Oxford  students. 
On  the   22nd   he  was   committed   close   prisoner    to    the 
Tower :  a  week  after  he  was  placed  upon  the  rack,  to  force 
him  if  possible  to  criminate  himself,  and  under  the  intoler- 
able torture   he  appears  to  have  given  up   the   names  of 
some  of  those  who  had  befriended  him.     The  information 


126  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


was  not  sufficient  or  not  satisfactory,  and  as  soon  as  he 
could  bear  it  he  was  racked  again.  Then  followed  certain 
"  controversies,"  which  were  held  in  the  chapel  of  the 
Tower ;  the  Jesuit  Father,  worn  with  agony  and  all  the 
miserable  adjuncts  of  his  imprisonment,  being  called  upon 
to  defend  himself  against  all  comers.  To  the  wonder 
of  those  who  flocked  to  see  him — for  the  controversies 
were  held  in  public — this  Jesuit  priest,  spite  of  all  he  had 
gone  through,  comported  himself  with  dignity  and  courage, 
and  was  quite  able  to  hold  his  own.  The  tide  of  popular 
feeling  seemed  likely  to  turn  in  his  favour,  for  the  people 
hated  the  torture-chamber,  and  they  always  loved  the 
man  who  stands  up  boldly  for  himself  against  odds.  The 
patterers  began  to  sing  about  the  streets  doggerels 
which  made  Campion  a  hero,  and  the  controversies  were 
abruptly  stopped.  For  another  month  after  this  he  was 
kept  close  prisoner  in  his  cell ;  then  another  order  came 
that  he  was  to  be  racked  for  the  third  time.  When,  three 
weeks  after  this,  he  was  put  upon  his  trial,  he  had  not 
sufficiently  recovered  from  the  effects  of  his  torture  to 
lift  his  hand  at  the  bar.  Of  course  he  was  condemned 
to  die.  On  the  1st  December,  1581,  he  was  executed  at 
Tyburn,  little  more  than  seventeen  months  after  he  had 
landed  at  Dover.  Whoever  will  may  read  in  Mr.  Simpson's 
work  the  hideous  details  of  that  last  tragic  scene, — the 
dreary  rainy  morning,  the  motley  procession,  the  dragging 
of  the  wretched  victims — for  there  were  three  of  them — 
through  the  deep  mire  of  the  London  streets,  the  hanging 
and  the  cutting  down,  and  the  ghastly  mutilation  that 
followed ;  the  plunging  of  the  executioner's  knife 
into  the  quivering  bodies,  the  flinging  of  the  bleeding 
members  into  the  cauldron  that  stood  by,  so  that  the 
blood  was  splashed  into  the  faces  of  the  crowd  that  pressed 
round. 

•  ••••• 

Among  those  who  stood  nearest  to  the  executioner  were 
many  who  had  been  deeply  moved  by  Campion's  preaching, 
and  had   ministered   to   his   wants   in   various   ways ;   for 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  127 

Campion  was  one  of  those  who,  animated  by  a  real 
enthusiasm  themselves,  are  sure  to  kindle  a  fire  in  the 
hearts  of  the  young  and  ardent.  A  man's  personal  influence 
depends  but  little  upon  the  goodness  of  his  cause.  It  was 
over  young  men,  above  all,  that  Campion's  career  exercised 
an  irresistible  fascination.  His  life  appeared  to  them  a 
life  of  heroic  self-sacrifice — his  death,  a  glorious  martyrdom. 
When  they  stood  beside  his  scaffold  and  witnessed  all  the 
horrors  of  that  barbarous  butchery,  they  could  not  but  be 
deeply  moved.  It  was  a  scene  to  make  the  most  callous 
shudder ;  but  in  those  who  sympathised  with  the  sufferers 
it  must  have  aroused  a  tumult  of  anger,  grief,  and 
passionate  revolt,  under  the  force  of  which  it  was  hard  to 
follow  the  dictates  of  prudence.  Foremost  among  that 
throng  who  pressed  nearer  and  nearer  to  catch  the  martyr's 
last  words,  or  if  possible  to  obtain  some  relic  of  him  to  keep 
as  a  peculiar  treasure,  was  young  Henry  Walpole,  whom 
we  heard  of  last  as  having  gone  up  to  Gray's  Inn  in  1578, 
shortly  before  Campion's  arrival.  Of  his  life  in  London 
we  know  little  or  nothing,  but  we  do  know  that  Gray's  Inn 
was  at  this  time  a  favourite  haunt  of  all  who  were 
"  Catholicly "  inclined — that  he  was  a  member  of  that 
Society  which  has  been  referred  to  is  highly  probable — that 
his  leanings  were  all  in  favour  of  the  mission  is  certain. 
When  the  executioner  had  finished  his  bloody  work  and 
flung  Campion's  quarters  into  the  cauldron  that  was 
simmering  hard  by,  the  blood  spurted  out  upon  Henry 
Walpole,  and  bespattered  his  garment.  The  beating  heart 
of  the  young  enthusiast  throbbed  with  a  new  emotion ; 
every  impulse  of  indignation  and  horror  stirred  within  him  ; 
and  it  seemed  that  there  had  come  to  him  a  call  from 
Heaven  to  take  up  the  work  which  had  been  so  cruelly  cut 
short,  and  to  follow  that  path  which  Campion  had  trodden. 
From  that  moment  his  course  was  determined  on,  and  from 
that  day  he  resolved  to  devote  himself  to  the  cause  for 
which  Edmund  Campion  had  died.^ 

The  crowd  dispersed,  and  each  man  went  to  his  home. 
Henry   Walpole    returned   to    his   chambers ;    his    excited 


128  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

feelings  would  not  let  him  remain  idle  nor  silent ;  and 
violently  agitated  as  he  was,  he  sought  relief  for  his 
emotion  by  pouring  out  his  thoughts  in  verse.  Not  many 
days  after  there  was  handed  about  in  manuscript  **  An 
Epitaph  of  the  Life  and  Death  of  the  most  famous  Clerk 
and  virtuous  Priest,  Edmund  Campion,  a  Eeverend  Father 
of  the  meek  society  of  the  blessed  name  of  Jesus."  It 
is  a  poem  of  thirty  stanzas,  by  no  means  lacking  in 
sweetness  and  delicacy  of  feeling,  and,  in  the  temper  of 
men's  minds  at  the  time  of  its  composition,  was  calculated 
to  produce  a  profound  sensation. 9  Copies  could  not  be 
multiplied  fast  enough  for  the  demand,  and  at  last  it  was 
privately  printed  by  one  Vallenger,  together  with  some 
other  poetical  effusions  on  the  same  subject.  Vallenger  was 
soon  called  to  account  for  his  audacity,  he  was  censured 
in  the  Star  Chamber,  and  condemned  to  lose  his  ears  and 
pay  a  fine  of  £100 ;  but  he  did  not  give  up  the  author's 
name,  and  bravely  suffered  alone.^° 

But  though  Vallenger  kept  his  secret  with  unusual 
courage,  it  was  not  long  before  whispers  went  abroad  that 
the  true  author  of  the  poem  was  Henry  Walpole,  who 
forthwith  became  an  object  of  suspicion :  he  had  been 
notoriously  at  Cambridge  an  associate  with  the  Eomanist 
malcontents ;  he  had  taken  no  degree  ;  the  oath  of  allegiance 
he  had  declined  to  be  bound  by ;  at  Gray's  Inn  he  had 
already  become  famous  by  his  uncompromising  habit  of 
standing  up  for  his  own  opinions,  and  had  the  character 
of  being  a  far  better  theologian  than  lawyer;  at  the 
disputations  between  Campion  and  the  English  divines 
in  the  Tower  he  had  been  a  constant  attendant ;  he  had 
been  present  at  his  trial  in  Westminster  Hall,  and  had  stood 
by  his  side  at  the  execution;"  he  had  taken  no  pains  to 
conceal  his  sentiments,  and  rather  appears  to  have  exhibited 
something  like  a  spirit  of  bravado.  His  biographers  assert 
that  he  had  made  himself  obnoxious  by  "  converting  "  more 
than  twenty  young  men  who  were  his  associates,  and  that 
his  activity  as  a  proselytiser  drew  upon  him  at  last  the 
notice  of  the  Council;  it  is  certain  that  his  cousin,  Edward 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  129 

Walpole  of  Houghton,  was  powerfully  influenced  by  him, 
and  indu«ed  to  refuse  the  oath  of  allegiance,  and  certain 
too,  that  this  circumstance  had  something  to  do  with 
his  finding  it  necessary  to  go  away  from  London,  where 
a  warrant  was  out  against  him;  even  the  precincts  of  Gray's 
Inn  would  soon  become  unsafe,  and  he  rode  off  to  his 
Norfolk  home  to  escape  the  pursuivants.  But  there  was 
a  danger  that  by  remaining  in  his  native  county  he  should 
compromise  his  relations,  and  after  some  delays  he  managed 
to  get  a  passage  on  board  a  vessel  sailing  for  France. ^^ 
Where  he  landed  is  unknown,  but  he  passed  through 
Eouen,  stayed  some  time  in  Paris,  arrived  at  Eheims  on 
the  7th  July,  1582,  and  enrolled  himself  among  the  students 
of  Theology.  Here  he  remained  for  nine  or  ten  months, 
and  then  set  out  for  Kome.  He  was  received  as  a  student 
into  the  English  College  on  the  28th  April,  1583,  and  in  the 
October  of  that  year  was  admitted  to  minor  orders.  In  the 
following  January  he  left  the  English  college  and  offered 
himself  to  the  Society  of  Jesus.  On  the  2nd  February,  1584, 
he  was  admitted  among  the  Probationers.  After  little  more 
than  a  year  his  health  broke  down ;  change  of  air  and 
climate  was  necessary,  and  he  was  sent  to  France  and 
completed  his  two  years  of  probation  at  Verdun.  The  next 
two  years  and  a  half  he  spent  at  Pont  a  Mousson,  during 
which  time  he  was  "  Prefect  of  the  Convictors."  At  last  he 
received  a  summons  to  proceed  to  Belgium,  and  by  order  of 
the  General  of  the  Society  he  was  ordained  Priest  at  Paris 
on  the  17th  December,  1588.^3  From  this  time  till  his  death 
we  can  follow  his  movements  pretty  closely ;  but  for  the 
present  we  must  leave  him,  and  turn  our  attention  to 
other  scenes  than  those  in  which  he  personally  took 
part. 


NOTES  TO   CHAPTER  IV. 

1.  Page  114.     Oliver^ s  Collectiom,  s.v. 

2.  Page  114.  The  brothers  Eliseus  (or  Elisha)  and  Jasper  Heywood 
were  the  sons  of  John  Heywood  the  epigrammatist,  who,  after  enjoying 
the  patronage  and  favour  of  Sir  Thomas  More  during  the  reign  of 
Henry  VHI.,  was  "much  valued"  by  his  daughter.  Queen  Mary, 
and  appears  to  have  been  admitted  to  her  presence  even  during  her  last 
illness.  On  the  accession  of  Elizabeth  he  joined  the  "Catholic  exodus," 
and  died  in  banishment  at  MaHnes  in  1565.  Of  his  two  sons,  Eliseus, 
the  elder,  was  elected  a  fellow  of  All  Souls  in  1547,  but  quitting  England 
with  his  father  he  spent  some  years  in  travelling,  and  finally  joined 
the  Society  of  Jesus  in  1574.  Jasper,  the  younger  brother,  was  a  far 
more  considerable  personage.  He  too  was  fellow  of  All  Souls,  and 
was  still  a  fellow  of  the  college  in  1560,  when  he  published  a  transla- 
tion of  the  Thyestes  of  Seneca  in  small  8vo,  which  is  now  extremely 
rare.  In  the  following  year  he  left  England,  and  entered  the  Society 
on  the  21st  May,  1562.  He  became  eventually  a  prominent  person 
among  the  Jesuits  in  England,  and  for  a  while  was  even  Superior, 
having  been  sent  over  in  1581,  shortly  after  Campion's  death.  He  was 
apprehended  in  1583,  and  thrown  into  the  Clink,  and  from  thence  sent 
to  the  Tower,  where  he  was  kept  till  January  1584-5,  when  he  was 
banished.  While  in  the  Tower  "  he  was  permitted  to  receive  visits  from 
his  sister,  who  was  able  to  bestow  upon  him  some  care  and  nursing." 
This  sister  was  Elizabeth,  mother  of  John  Donne,  afterwards  Dean  of 
St.  PauVs,  whom  Ben  Jonson  calls  "  a  noted  Jesuit."  Jasper  Heywood 
was  celebrated  for  his  proficiency  in  Hebrew  and  for  his  learning 
generally.  See  Wood,  Ath.  Oxon, ;  the  Athenceum,  No.  2508,  p. 
673 ;  Troubles  of  our  Catholic  Forefathers,  second  series,  pp.  34, 
68,  &c. 

3.  Page  115.  Bellarmine  was  one  of  Stapleton's  scholars  when  he 
was  professor  of  divinity  at  Louvain. 

4.  Page  118.  For  an  account  of  Parsons  see  Wood's  Ath.  Oxon.,  by 
Bliss ;  Oliver's  Collections ;  De  Backer,  BibliotMque  des  Ecrivains 
de  la  Compagnie  de  Jesus,  iii.  564.  For  Campion,  see  the  exhaustive 
Life  of  him  published  by  the  late  Mr.  Eichard  Simpson.  Williams  & 
Norgate,  1867. 

5.  Page  122.  Among  the  Yelverton  MSS.  in  the  possession  of  Lord 
Calthorpe  there  is  one  which  is  of  peculiar  interest  for  the  student 
of  the  history  of  the  Jesuit  mission.    It  is  in  vol.  xxxiii.,  and  is  entitled 

130 


ONE  GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE     131 


"A  generall  discourse  of  the  popes  holines  and  preists  with  th"^*-'  deuices 
for  y^  maintenance  of  ther  religion."  It  is  written  in  a  very  minute 
hand  and  with  great  care,  by  one  who  evidently  had  gone  to  Rome 
and  spent  several  months  there,  with  the  object  of  making  money 
by  giving  valuable  intelligence  to  the  English  government  on  his  return. 
It  is  probably  the  most  complete  and  elaborate  account  of  the  persons 
and  habits  of  the  English  exiles  in  existence,  and  well  deserves  to  be 
printed.  The  names,  addresses,  antecedents,  and  description  of  no 
less  than  295  Englishmen  are  given  who  were  living  in  banishment 
in  1581.  The  spy  describes  minutely  the  appearance  and  habits  of 
all  the  members  of  the  Mission,  except  Campion,  whom,  because  he  had 
but  very  lately  come  to  Eome,  he  appears  never  to  have  seen.  His 
account  of  Parsons  is  as  follows  :  "  Robarte  Persones,  preste  and  Jesuite 
penitencer  for  the  nacione,  some  tymes  a  studient  of  Phisicke,  and  at 
the  findinge  of  [obliterated]  about  40  yeres  of  adge,  talle  and  bige  of 
statur,  full  faced  and  smooth  of  countenance,  his  beard  thicke  of  an 
abrome  \slc\  collore  and  cute  shorte."  The  fellow  arrived  at  Rome 
5th  July,  1579,  and  lodged  at  the  house  of  Solomon  Aldred  [see  above, 
p.  110,  n.  11],  and  thence  removed  to  the  English  College,  where  he 
was  received  with  confidence,  and  treated  with  kindness  and  hospitality. 
He  stayed  at  Rome  till  the  following  year,  and  he  tells  us  that  "the 
17th  May  1580,  Tuesday,  I  arrived  at  London  in  the  morning,  and  after 
noon  came  to  the  court,  where  by  means  of  Mr.  Frauch  {8ic\  Myles 
I  came  to  the  speach  of  Mr.  Secretary  Walsingham  his  ho^"  There  is 
a  glorious  portrait  of  Parsons  in  the  third  volume  of  Hazart,  Kerckelycke 
Historie  van  de  Geheele  Wereldt.  Fol.  Antwerp,  1669.  The  book  is 
common  enough  without  the  portraits  (which  give  it  its  value),  but 
very  rare  in  its  complete  form.  Dr.  Bliss  had  never  seen  this  portrait, 
and  I  am  indebted  to  Father  Remy  de  Buck  for  procuring  for  me 
the  copy  of  Hazart  in  which  it  occurs.  In  the  same  volume  is  a 
magnificently  engraved  portrait  of  Sir  Thomas  More  and  a  scarcely 
less  brilliant  one  of  Campion. 

I  take  this  opportunity  of  expressing  my  obligations  to  Lord  Calthorpe 
for  his  great  kindness  and  hospitality  when  allowing  me  to  have  access 
to  his  precious  MSS.  in  January  1876. 

6.  Page  122.  The  apprehension  of  Emerson  is  one  of  the  many 
exciting  incidents  in  Mr.  Morris's  Troubles  of  our  Catholic  Forefathers, 
2nd  series,  p.  40. 

7.  Page  123.  The  particulars  regarding  Bishop  Goldwell  have  come 
to  light  only  very  recently.  My  authority  is  Mr.  Maziere  Brady's  work. 
The  Episcopal  Succession  in  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland,  A.D.  1400 
to  1875.  2  vols.  Svo.  Rome,  1876.  Mr.  Brady  refers  for  a  great  deal 
of  his  information  to  the  Month  for  January  and  February  1876, 


132  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

8.  Fage  127.  From  a  MS.  in  the  Burgundian  Library  at  Brussels 
(No.  4554)  it  appears  that  Henry  Walpole  himself  gave  the  account 
in  the  text  of  his  presence  at  Campion's  execution,  and  of  its  profound 
effect  upon  him,  to  Father  Ignatius  Basselier,  shortly  after  its  occurrence. 
Cresswell,  whose  Histoire  de  la  Vie  et  ferme  Constance  du  Pire  Henry 
Walpole  was  written  eight  months  after  he  suffered  at  York,  had  not 
apparently  heard  the  story  of  Campion's  blood  spurting  out  upon  him  ; 
but  he  and  Yepez  mention  the  fact  of  his  being  present  at  Campion's 
death  and  at  the  conferences  in  Westminster  Hall.  Bartoli  {DelV  Istoria 
della  Campagnia  di  Giesu  VInghilterra,  4to,  1676,  p.  411)  refers  to  the 
story  ;  Morus  does  not  {Hist.  Prov.  Angl.,  p.  202).  For  those  who  have 
access  to  Holinshed^s  Chronicle  it  will  repay  them  to  read  his  account 
of  Campion's  execution.  It  is  valuable  as  showing  the  very  great 
excitement  that  that  event  occasioned.  As  to  the  manner  in  which 
the  story  is  related  in  Holinshed,  Hallam  says,  "  The  trials  and  deaths 
of  Campion  and  his  associates  are  told  in  the  Continuation  of  Holinshed 
with  a  savageness  and  bigotry  which  I  am  very  sure  no  scribe  for  the 
Inquisition  could  have  surpassed.  .  .  .  See  particularly  p.  448,  for  the 
insulting  manner  in  which  this  writer  describes  the  pious  fortitude  of 
these  butchered  ecclesiastics." — Constitutional  History,  vol.  i.  p.  146, 
n.  i.  p.  3,  tenth  edition,  post  8vo. 

9.  Page  128.  The  only  contemporary  copy  of  the  poem  which  is 
believed  to  be  in  existence  is  now  in  the  Bodleian  Library,  from  which 
the  following  transcript  has  been  made.  I  believe  it  has  never  yet  been 
printed  in  full,  though  Dr.  Oliver  mentions  the  fact  of  four  "sonnets" 
having  been  printed  "  in  a  book  of  about  fifty  pages,  entituled  '  A  true 
Report  of  the  Martyrdome  of  Mr.  Campian,  written  by  a  Catholic  Priest,' 
no  place  or  year  mentioned  in  the  title."  This  appears  to  be  the  work 
mentioned  by  Mr.  Simpson  in  his  Bibliographical  Appendix  to  the  Life 
of  Campion,  p.  350,  No.  7.     I  have  never  seen  the  book. 

How  much  importance  was  attached  to  the  following  poem  is  plain,  not 
only  from  the  fact  of  the  government  having  made  great,  and  apparently 
successful,  exertions  to  suppress  it,  and  destroy  all  copies  printed  or  in 
manuscript,  but  from  a  curious  collateral  piece  of  evidence  which  I  was 
fortunate  enough  to  stumble  upon  some  years  ago.  On  the  21st  March, 
1594,  i.e.,  thirteen  years  after  Campion's  death,  "  John  Bolt,  yeoman, 
late  of  Thornden,  Essex,"  was  brought  up  for  examination  before  Sir 
Edward  Coke,  then  Solicitor- General.  Among  other  things  laid  to  his 
charge,  and  for  which  he  had  to  give  account,  he  was  made  to  confess 
•'  that  certain  leaves  containing  verses,  beginning  with  '  Why  do  I  use  my 
paper,  pen,  and  ink,  &c.,'  are  in  his  handwriting,  wrote  them  in  London 
five  years  since  from  a  paper  given  to  him  by  Henry  Souche,  servant 
to  Mr.  Morgan  of  Finsbury  Fields,  and  has  read  them  five  or  six  times 
since.  .  .  ."—P.  R.  0.,  Domestic,  Eliz.,  vol.  248,  n.  38. 

Elliott,    Sledd,  and  Munday  were  three   professional    spies    and 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  133 

informers  who  were  witnes&es  at  Campion's  trial.  On  these  worthies  see 
Simpson's  Lt/e  of  Campion. 

Norton  was  the  "rack  master,"  who  was  committed  to  prison  for 
a  few  days  when  an  outcry  was  raised  against  him  for  his  atrocious 
cruelty.  He  was  soon  set  at  liberty,  and  lived  to  ply  his  odious  vocation 
upon  many  another  sufferer  in  after  years. 

Lee  was  William  Lee,  foreman  of  the  jury  which  tried  Campion. 

There  is  a  good  deal  about  Elderton  and  Munday  in  Warton's 
History  of  English  Poetry,  edited  by  Hazlitt,  1871,  vol.  iv.  p.  391. 

Vita  Edmundi  Campiani,  Ang.  vers.  Laud.  Eot,  2,  supra  E.  C. 
(in  Bibl.  Bodl.,  Oxon.) 

*h         *i*         *i* 
Jhesus  Maria. 

A  N  Epitaphe  of  the  lyfe  and  deathe  of  the  most  famouse  clerke  and 
-^  vertuouse  priest  Edmfid  Campian,  and  reverend  father  of  the  meeke 
societie  of  the  blessed  name  of  Jesus. 

"Whie  do  y  vse  my  papire  yncke  and  penne? 
or  call  my  witts  to  counseil  what  to  sale? 
such  memories  were  made  for  mortall  men, 

I  speake  of  saynts,  whose  names  can  not  decay. 
An  angells  trumpe  were  meeter  far  to  sounde 

their  gloriouse  deathes,  yf  such  on  earth  were  founde. 

"pardon  my  wants,     y  ofTer  nawght  but  wyll. 

theire  register  remayneth  safe  above, 
Campian  exceades  the  cupasse  of  my  skyll. 

yet  let  me  vse  the  measure  of  my  love, 
and  geave  me  leave  yn  lowe  and  homelie  verse, 

this  highe  attempte  in  Ingland  to  rehearse. 

"  he  came  by  vow.     The  cawse,  to  conquyre  synne, 

his  armour,  praier.     the  word  his  terdge  and  shielde, 
his  cufort  heaven,  his  spoile  our  sowles  to  wyne. 

the  devyll  his  foe,  the  wicked  worlde  his  fielde. 
his  triumphe  ioy.     his  wage  Eeternall  blysse, 
his  capteine  Christe,  which  ever  durying  ys. 

*'  from  ease  to  payne,  from  honour  to  disgrace, 

from  love  to  hate,  to  daynger,  beyng  well, 
from  safe  abrode,  to  feares  yn  euerie  place. 

contemnyng  deathe,  to  save  our  sowles  from  hell, 
our  new  apostle  cumyng  to  restore 

the  feith,  wich  Austen  planted  here  before. 


134  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

**  hys  native  flowres  were  myxte  with  hearbe  of  grace. 

his  mylde  behaveour  tempered  well  wyth  skyll. 
A  lowlye  mynde  possest  a  learned  place. 

A  sugred  speache,  a  rare  and  vertuouse  wyll. 
A  saynt  lyke  ma  was  sett  in  earth  belowe 

the  seede  of  trewth  yn  hearyng  harts  to  sowe. 

*'  Wyth  tounge  and  pene  the  trewth  he  tawght  and  wrote, 
by  force  whereof  they  came  to  Christe  apace, 

But  when  it  pleased  God  it  was  his  lote, 

he  shuld  be  thrall,  he  leant  hym  so  much  grace, 

his  pacience  there  dyd  worke  so  much  nor  more, 
as  had  his  heavenlie  speaches  done  before. 

"  his  fare  was  harde,  yet  mylde  and  sweate  his  cheare. 

his  prison  close,  yet  free  and  loose  his  mynde. 
his  torture  greate,  yet  scant  or  none  his  feare. 

his  offers  large,  yet  no  thyng  culd  him  blynde. 
6  constant  ma,  6  mynde,  6  vertew  straynge, 

whome  want,  nor  woe,  nor  feare,  nor  hope  culd  chaynge. 

"  from  racke  in  towre  they  browght  hym  to  dispute, 
bokelesse,  alone,  to  answere  all  that  came, 

yet  Christe  gave  grace,  he  dyd  them  all  confute 
so  sweately  there  yn  glorie  of  his  name, 

that  evyn  the  adverse  part  are  forst  to  sale, 
that  Campians  cawse  dyd  beare  the  bell  awaie. 

'•  This  foyle  enragde  the  mynds  of  sii  so  farre, 
they  thowght  it  best  to  take  hys  lyfe  awaye, 
becawse  they  sawe  he  wuld  theire  matter  marre, 
and  leave  them  schortly  nawght  at  all  to  saie. 
Traytour  he  was  wyth  manie  a  seely  sleighte 
yet  was  a  ieurie  packt,  that  cried  gyltie  streight. 

"  Religion  there  was  treason  to  the  quene, 

Preachyng  of  penaunce  warre  agaynst  the  land, 

priests  were  such  dayngerouse  men,  as  hath  not  bene, 
praiers  and  beedes  were  fyght  and  force  of  hand. 

Cases  of  coscience  bane  vnto  the  state. 

So  blynde  ys  errour,  so  false  a  wittnes  hate. 

"  And  yet  behold  theise  lambes  are  drawen  to  dye, 
treasons  proclaymed,  the  quene  ys  putt  yn  feare, 
Owt  vpon  Satan,  phie  malice,  phie. 

Speakest  thow  to  them  that  dyd  the  gyltlesse  heare '? 
Can  humble  sowles  departyng  now  to  Christe, 
protest  vntrew?    Avaunt  foule  fende,  thou  lyest. 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  135 


**  My  sovereigne  Liege,  beholde  yo"^  subiects  end. 

Yo""  secrete  fooes  do  mysinfoorme  yc  grace. 
Who  yn  yo""  cawse  theire  holie  lyfes  wuld  spende, 

As  traytours  dye?     a  rare  and  monstruouse  case, 
the  bloodie  wolfe  condemnes  the  harmelesse  sheepe, 

before  the  dogge,  the  while  the  sheepards  sleape. 

'  Ingland  loke  vp.     thie  soyle  ys  steinde  wyth  bloode, 
thow  hast  made  martyrs  manie  of  thine  owne, 

jf  thow  hadst  grace,  theire  deathes  wuld  do  thee  good. 
The  seede  wyll  take,  wich  yn  such  blood  ys  sowne, 

And  Campians  learnyng  fertile  so  before, 
thus  watred  too,  must  neades  of  force  be  more. 

"Repent  thee,  Eliott,  of  thie  Judas  kysse, 

I  wysshe  thie  penaunce,  not  thie  desperate  end. 

Let  Norton  thynke,  wich  now  yn  prison  ys, 
to  whome  was  seid,  he  was  not  Csesars  frend, 

And  let  the  Judge  consyder  well  yn  feare, 

that  Pilate  wasshte  his  hands,  and  was  not  cleare. 

"The  wittnes  false,  Sledd,  Munday,  and  the  rest 
Wich  had  yo""  slaunders  noted  yn  yo'  bokes, 

Confesse  yC  fault  beforehand,  it  were  best, 
lest  God  do  fynde  it  writen,  when  he  lookes 

In  dreadfull  doome  vpon  the  sowles  of  men, 
It  wyll  be  late,  alas,  to  mende  it  then. 

♦'  Yow  bloodie  Jewrie,  Lee,  and  all  the  leven, 

take  heede,  yo""  verdite  wich  was  geaven  yn  hast 

do  not  exclude  yo^  from  the  ioyes  of  heaven, 
and  cawse  yo"  rew  itt,  when  the  tyme  ys  past, 

and  euerie  one  whose  malice  cawsde  hym  sale 
crucifye,  let  hym  dreade  the  terrour  of  that  day. 

"fond  Elderton  call  yn  thie  foolishe  ryme, 
thie  scurrile  balades  are  too  bad  to  sell. 

Let  good  men  rest,  and  mend  thie  selfe  yn  tyme. 
Confesse  yn  prose,  thou  hast  not  metred  well. 

Or  yf  thie  folic  ca  not  choose  but  fayne 

Write  alehowse  ioies,  blaspheme  thou  not  yn  vayne. 

"  Remember  yo"  that  wulde  oppresse  the  cawse, 

The  churche  ys  Christes,  his  honour  ca  not  dye, 

thowgh  hell  it  selfe  wreste  her  gryslye  iawes, 
and  ioyne  yn  leage  wyth  schisme  and  hasresie, 

thowgh  crafte  devise  and  cruell  rage  oppresse, 
yet  skyll  wyll  wryte,  and  martyrdome  confesse. 


136  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


"  yo"  thowght  perhapps,  when  learned  Campian  dyes, 
his  pene  must  cease,  his  sugred  tounge  be  styll. 
But  yo"  forgeatt  how  lowde  his  death  it  cries. 

how  far  beyonde  the  sounde  of  tounge  and  guyll. 
yo"  dyd  not  know  how  rare  and  greate  a  good 
it  was  to  wryte  hys  pretiouse  gyfts  yn  blood.  ^ 

/' 
"  Ly vying  he  spake  to  them,  wich  prsesent  weare, 
his  wrytyng  toke  the  censure  of  the  view. 
Now  fame  reportes  his  learnyng  far  and  neare, 

And  now  his  deathe  confirmes  his  doctrine  trew. 
His  vertues  now  are  writen  yn  the  skyes, 
and  often  read  wyth  holie  watred  eyes. 

"All  Europe  wonders  at  so  rare  a  man, 

Ingland  ys  filled  wyth  rumour  of  his  end. 

London  must  neades,  for  it  was  present  than 
When  constantly  .iij.  saynts  theire  lyfes  dyd  spend, 

the  streates,  the  stones,  the  steapps,  they  hale  them  by, 
proclayme  the  cawse,  for  wich  theise  martyrs  dye. 

"The  towre  sales,  the  trewth  he  dyd  defende, 

The  barre  beares  wittnes  of  his  gyltelesse  mynde, 

Tiburne  doth  tell,  he  made  a  pacient  end. 
In  everie  gate  his  martyrdome  we  fynde. 

In  vayne  yo"  wroghte,  that  wuld  obscure  his  name, 
for  heaven  and  earthe  wyll  styll  recorde  the  same. 

"yo"^  sentence  wronge  pronounced  of  hym  here, 

Exemptes  hym  from  the  iudgement  for  to  come. 
6  happie  he  that  ys  not  iudged  there ! 

God  graunte  me  too,  to  haue  an  earthlie  doome. 
yo""  wittnes  false  and  lewdely  taken  yn, 
doth  cawse  he  ys  not  now  accusde  of  synne. 

"  his  prison  now,  the  citie  of  the  kynge, 

his  racke  and  torture  ioies  and  heavenlie  blysse, 
for  mes  reproche  wyth  angells  he  doth  synge 

a  sacred  songe,  wich  euerlastyng  ys. 
for  shame  but  schort,  and  losse  of  small  renowne, 
he  purchast  hath  an  ever  duryng  crowne. 

"his  quartered  lymmes  shall  ioyne  wyth  ioye  agayne, 
and  ryse  a  bodie  bryghter  then  the  sonne, 
yo"^  bloodie  malice  tormeted  hym  yn  vayne, 

for  euerie  wrynche  sii  glorie  hath  hym  woiie. 
And  euerie  droppe  of  blood,  wich  he  dyd  spende, 
hath  reapte  a  ioye,  wich  never  shall  haue  ende. 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  137 


"Can  drerye  death  then  daunt  our  feith,  or  payne? 

Leste  lyngrying  lyfe  we  feare  to  loose  our  ease? 
No.     no.     such  death  procureth  lyfe  agayne. 

Tis  onely  god,  we  tremble  to  displease, 
who   kylles  but  onse,  and  euer  synce  we  dye. 

whose  hole  revenge  torments  eeternally. 

"We  ca  not  feare  a  mortall  tormente.    we. 

theise  martyrs  bloods  hath  moistened  all  our  harts, 
whose  parted  quarters  when  we  chawnce  to  see 

we  learne  to  plaie  the  constant  Christian  parts, 
his  head  doth  speake,  and  heavenlie  precepts  gyve, 

how  we  y'  looke,  shuld  frame  our  selfs  to  lyve. 

"his  yougthe  instructes  vs  how  to  spend  our  dales. 

his  fleying  bydds  vs  learne  to  baiiyshe  synne. 
his  streight  profession  schewes  the  narrowgh  waies, 

wich  they  must  walke  that  loke  to  enter  yn. 
his  home  returne  by  daynger  and  distresse, 

emboldeth  vs,  our  conscience  to  professe. 

' '  his  hurdle  drawes  vs  wyth  hym  to  the  crosse. 

his  speaches  there  provokes  vs  for  to  dye. 
his  death  doth  sale,  this  lyfe  ys  but  a  losse. 

his  martryd  blood  from  heaven  to  vs  doth  crye. 
his  fyrst  and  last,  and  all  conspire  yn  this, 

to  schew  the  waye  that  leadeth  vs  to  blysse. 

"  blessed  be  God,  wich  lent  hym  so  much  grace, 
thanked  be  Christ,  wich  blest  hys  martyr  so, 
happie  ys  he,  wich  seeth  his  masters  face, 

Cursed  all  they,  that  thowght  to  worke  hym  woe, 
bounden  be  we,  to  geave  asternall  praise, 
to  Jesus  name,  wich  such  a  man  dyd  rayse. 

10.  Page  128.  Henry  Vallenger  appears  to  have  been  a  Norfolk  man. 
There  were  several  members  of  the  family  settled  at  King's  Lynn  and 
the  neighbourhood  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  it  is  probable  that 
Vallenger  and  Walpole  were  old  friends. 

11.  Page  128.     See  above,  note  8. 

12.  Page  129.  Bartoli  tells  us  that  an  order  was  issued  for  his  appre- 
hension by  the  Council ;  and  expressly  mentions  Robert,  Earl  of  Leicester, 
as  having  been  incensed  against  him  in  consequence  of  his  having 
converted  his  cousin  Edward  Walpole.  This  is  a  highly  probable  story, 
as  Leicester  can  hardly  have  failed  to  take  some  interest  in  one  who 


138  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

after  his  own  death,  would  succeed  to  Amy  Robsart's  estates  in  Norfolk, 
Bartoli  goes  on  to  say  that  Henry  Walpole  slipped  away  to  Norfolk,  and 
was  actually  concealed  in  a  hiding-place  {in  unfedel  nascondiglio  della 
sua  medesima  casa)  at  Anmer  Hall  ;  that  he  escaped  with  difficulty  from 
the  pursuivants,  and  concealed  himself  in  the  woods  by  day  and  pursued 
his  journey  by  night ;  that  he  managed  to  reach  Newcastle,  and  thence 
took  ship  for  France. — Bartoli,  u.s.,  p.  413. 

13.  Page  129.  "  1582,  7  die  [Julii]  ex  Anglia  ad  nos  venit  D.  Hen. 
Walpole  disertus  gravis  et  plus." 

"  1583,  2°  Martii,  Roma  missi  sunt  D.  Henricus  Walpoole,  D.  Tho. 
Lovelace,  &c.  .  .  .  quibuscum  Verduno  profecit  D.  Ric.  Singleton," — 
Douay  Diary,  printed  by  the  Fathers  of  the  Oratory,  Brompton, 

"  MDLxxxiii.  Henricus  Walpolus,  Anglus,  Norfolgiensis,  annorum  24, 
aptus  ad  Theologiam,  receptus  fuit  in  hoc  Anglorum  Collegium  inter 
alumnos  S™  D.  N.  Gregorii,  a  P,  Alfonso  Agazzario,  Rectore,  de  expresso 
mandato  ill"'"'  D.  Cardinalis  Boncompagni,  Protectoris,  sub  die  28  Aprilis 
1583. 

"  Mense  Octobris  ejusdem  anni  fuit  cum  illo  dispensatum  in  [sic] 
irregularitate  propter  heresim  contracta  ab  111'"°  Cardinale  S.  Severinse, 
et  eodem  mense  accepit  minores  ordines  a  R'"°  Asafensi  [Bishop 
Goldwell  of  St.  Asaph]. 

"  Discessit  e  Collegio  antequam  faceret  juramentum  in  mense 
Januarii  1584." — Ex  Archivio  Collegii  Anglicani  de  Urbe,  MS.  No. 
303,  fo.  16  b. 

What  follows  is  written  with  his  own  hand  in  the  Album  of  the 
Tournay  Noviciate,  which  is  still  preserved  among  the  MSS.  of  the 
Burgundian  Library  at  Brussels. 

"Ego  Henricus  Walpolus  Nordvincensis  Anglus,  natus  in  Octobri 
anno  1558,  In  Anglia  dedi  operam  humanioribus  litteris  aliquandiu  in 
patria,  deinde  in  Academia  Cantabrigiensi  annis  tribus. 

"  Londini  fere  quadriennio  legibus  Anglicanis. 

"  Postea  Rhemis  theologias  seholasticaa  simul  et  positives  per  annum 
unum,  Romse  similiter  fere  per  annum  ante  ingressum  Societatis ;  post 
ingressum  vero  duobus  annis  et  medio  theologiaa  Scholasticas  Mussiponti, 
quo  tempore  fere  toto  Prefectum  egi  apud  Conuictores. 

"Admissus  in  Societatem  Jesu  Romse  a  R.  P.  N.  Claudio  Aquaviva 
Generali  Societatis  Jesu  2  februarii  A^  1584,  ibidem  in  domo  probationis 
fui  tredecim  mensibus,  inde  ob  adversam  valetudinem  in  Francia  [m] 
missus,  fere  per  annum  mansi  in  domo  Probationis  Virdunensi,  ubi 
etiam  absolute  probationis  biennio  uota  Scholasticorum  emisi,  sacrum 
celebrante  R^o  P.  Benedicto  Nigrio  magistro  Novitiorum. 

"  Mussiponto  in  Belgium  missus  R^  P.  N.  Generalis  mandato, 
Parisiis  in  transitu  factus  fui  Sacerdos  17  decembris  A°  1588,  cum 
antea  a  R^isso  jjo  Sutfraganeo  Metensi  promotus  fuissem  ad  ordinem 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  139 

Subdiaconatus  pridie  Pascatis  26  Aprilis,  et  ad  ordinem  Diaconatus  21 
Mali  eiusdem  anni. 

"  Bruxellis  et  in  castris  officia  Societatis  prestiti  per  tres  annos ; 
denique  a  R^°  P.  Oliverio  Manaraso  Societatis  Jesu  in  Belgio  Provinciali, 
uocatus  fui  ad  Domum  Probationis  Tornacensem,  ubi  inchoavi  tertium 
annum  probationis  22  octobris  A°  1591  et  examinatus  fui  a  P.  Joanne 
Bargio  iuxta  examen  Scholasticorum,  quistudiain  Societate  absoluerunt, 
respondique  firmum  in  mea  deliberatione  et  uotis  et  promissione  Deo 
oblatis  antequam  ad  studia  me  conferrem,  me  permanere,  eique  reddidi 
rationem  vitaa  mees,  inchoando  ab  eo  tempore  quo  eam  reddideram, 
quando  ad  studia  missus  fui. 

"Actum  Tornaci  in  domo  probationis  Societatis  Jesu.  Circa 
Natalem  Diii°  a  1591.     Ita  est  Henricus  Walpolus." 


CHAPTEE  V 


THE    KINSMEN 


"  A  rampart  of  my  fellows  ;  it  would  seem 
Impossible  for  me  to  fail,  so  watched 
By  gentle  friends  who  made  my  cause  their  ownj' 

— Paracelsus. 

With  the  execution  of  Campion  the  Jesuit  mission  for  a 
while  collapsed.  Of  all  that  band  of  men  who  in  the  winter 
of  1580  set  forth  with  such  high  hopes  to  "reduce" 
England  to  the  old  Faith,  only  one  escaped  either  the 
scaffold  or  the  dungeon,  and  that  one  was  Eobert  Parsons. 
Of  the  rest,  such  as  were  not  hung  were  kept  in  jail  for 
a  year  or  two,  and  then,  to  the  number  of  twenty-one,  were 
shipped  off  to  the  coast  of  Normandy.^ 

Whatever  effect  Campion's  preaching  and  death  may 
have  produced  upon  the  more  earnest  sympathisers  with 
his  views,  the  immediate  consequences  of  the  mission  were 
eminently  disastrous.  The  Excommunication  had  been 
Rome's  first  challenge :  it  had  been  answered  by  the 
legislation  of  1570.  The  Jesuit  invasion  was  the  second :  it 
was  replied  to  by  the  Act  of  the  23rd  Elizabeth  ;  and  it  will 
be  worth  while  at  this  point  briefly  to  trace  the  development 
of  that  penal  legislation  which  from  this  time  began  to  be 
put  in  force  with  dreadful  severity,  and  which,  whether 
necessary  or  not,  became  during  the  remainder  of  the 
Queen's  reign  a  whip  of  scorpions  for  the  unhappy  votaries 
of  the  see  of  Rome. 

The   Act   of   1st   Elizabeth  was  mainly  concerned  with 

enforcing  the   use   of   the  Book   of   Common   Prayer,  and 

providing  against  the  employment  of  any  form  of  worship 

140 


ONE   GENERATION  OE  A   NOREOLK  HOUSE     141 

except  such  as  that  book  prescribed.  The  penalties  of  that 
Act  were  rather  negative  than  positive,  attendance  at 
church  was  compulsory,  yet  the  fine  for  staying  away, 
although  vexatious,  could  hardly  be  regarded  as  intolerable ; 
to  say  mass  in  public  or  private  was  illegal,  but  the  mass 
was  not  mentioned  specifically  by  name. 

After  the  Bull  of  Excommunication  was  published,  the 
Act  of  the  13th  Elizabeth  treated  the  breach  between 
England  and  the  Papacy  as  a  fact  that  could  no  longer  be 
ignored,  and  the  penalties  of  that  Act  were  directed  against 
all  communion  or  intercourse  with  the  Church  of  Rome  or 
its  emissaries,  and  the  acceptance  of  absolution  at  the 
hands  of  its  priesthood  was  declared  to  be  criminal  and 
treasonable.  But  when  the  Jesuit  mission  assumed  the 
character  of  an  actual  invasion,  the  new  aggression  gave 
occasion  for  the  passing  of  the  famous  "Act  to  retain  the 
Queen's  Majesty's  Subjects  in  their  due  obedience";  with 
the  rigorous  enforcement  of  which  that  odious  course  of 
cruelty  and  oppression  began  which  has  been  called  by 
Continental  historians  **  the  English  persecution." 

Hitherto  the  Catholic  gentry  had  received  some  measure 
of  toleration,  though  regarded  with  disfavour  and  suspicion. 
Henceforth  they  had  to  choose  between  conformity  and 
something  like  ruin  or  death.  By  the  first  clause  of  this 
Act,  to  persuade  anyone  to  embrace  the  "  Romish  religion," 
or  to  yield  to  such  persuasion,  was  to  incur  the  penalties  of 
high  treason.  By  the  fourth  clause,  "  every  person  which 
shall  say  or  sing  mass  "  shall  forfeit  the  sum  of  two  hundred 
marks,  and  be  imprisoned  for  a  year;  and  "  every  person 
which  shall  willingly  'lie,ar  mass"  is  to  forfeit  one  hundred 
marks  and  suffer  a  like  imprisonment.  But  the  most 
terrible  clause  was  the  fifth,  which  from  this  time  became 
the  real  instrument  of  oppression  and  robbery  upon  the 
unhappy  Recusants,  and  which,  in  lieu  of  the  old  fine  for 
non-attendance  at  church,  provided  "  that  every  person 
above  the  age  of  sixteen  years,  which  shall  not  repair  to 
some  church,  chapel,  or  usual  place  of  common  prayer,  but 
forbear  the  same  .  .  .  shall  forfeit  to  the  Queen's  Majesty, 


142  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

for  every  month  .  ,  .  which  he  or  she  shall  so  forbear, 
twenty  pounds  of  laioful  English  ynoney ;  and  besides  over 
and  above  the  said  forfeitures,  ...  be  bound  with  two 
sufficient  sureties,  in  the  sum  of  two  hundred  pounds  at 
least,  to  their  good  behaviour." 

Finally,  lest  the  very  severity  of  this  clause  should  defeat 
its  object,  and  lest  it  should  appear  that  only  the  Crown  or 
the  great  lords  would  benefit  by  the  exactions  to  be  levied 
on  the  Recusants,  it  was  enacted  by  the  eleventh  clause 
that  all  moneys  forfeited  by  this  statute  should  be  divided 
into  three  parts  :  one  part  to  go  to  the  Queen,  one-third 
to  tJie  poor  of  the  parish  where  the  offence  luas  committed, 
the  remaining  third  to  the  informer.  I  have  never  met 
with  the  faintest  trace  of  evidence  that  the  poor  of  the 
parish  in  any  one  case  benefited  directly  or  indirectly  by 
the  fines  that  were  levied.  Some  portion  undoubtedly  did 
find  its  way  into  the  Exchequer,  but  they  who  got  the  lion's 
share  of  the  spoil  were  the  pursuivants  and  informers. 

From  this  time  the  persecution  of  the  Catholics  in 
England  began  in  earnest,  and  men  with  scruples  of  con- 
science had  to  make  up  their  minds  either  to  sacrifice  their 
dearest  convictions  or  to  sufi'er  for  them. 

When  Henry  Walpole  made  his  choice,  and  without  a 
licence  crossed  the  Channel,  he  left  behind  him  in  the 
Norfolk  home  five  brothers,  the  eldest  of  whom  was  in  his 
twenty-second  year,  the  youngest  a  schoolboy  of  twelve.^ 
The  second  of  these  brothers,  Richard  Walpole,  had  been 
baptized  at  Docking  on  the  8th  of  October,  1564.  Just  a 
fortnight  before  his  elder  brother  had  left  Cambridge,  to 
commence  his  studies  at  Gray's  Inn,  Richard  Walpole  had 
matriculated  at  Cambridge,  having  been  nominated  to  one 
of  the  scholarships  at  St.  Peter's  College  lately  founded 
by  Edward,  Lord  North. 3  He  continued  to  reside  at  the 
university  for  the  next  three  years,  and  evidently  made 
good  use  of  his  time ;  but  the  influence  of  his  brother  was 
strong  upon  him,  and  when  Henry  found  it  necessary  to 
make  his  escape  from  England,  Richard  soon  followed  him. 
He   left  England   in   the   summer    of   1584,  and   reached 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  143 


Eheims  on  the  3rd  of  June.  He  stayed  there  until  the 
following  spring,  and  presented  himself  at  the  English 
College  at  Kome  in  April.4  But  the  influence  of  Henry 
Walpole  was  not  confined  to  the  circle  of  his  brothers.  It 
seems  to  have  made  itself  felt  even  upon  the  remoter 
branches  of  the  Walpole  family.  We  have  seen  in  the 
previous  chapter  how  it  was  directly  through  his  persuasion 
that  his  cousin  Edward  Walpole  of  Houghton  was  prevailed 
on  to  take  up  a  decided  line  and  openly  to  join  the  party 
of  the  Kecusants.  There  was  another  cousin  upon  whom, 
though  his  influence  was  apparently  only  indirect,  yet  it 
was  so  potent  and  effectual  as  to  prove  in  the  sequel  of 
great  importance  to  the  future  career  of  the  whole  family. 

When  Serjeant  John  Walpole  of  Harpley  died,  on  the  1st 
November,  1557,  he  left,  as  has  been  said,  one  son,  William 
Walpole,  heir  to  his  large  possessions. s  The  boy,  at  the 
time  of  the  taking  his  father's  inquisition  on  the  14th  April, 
1558,  was  declared  to  be  of  the  age  of  thirteen  years  eight 
months  and  six  days,  i.e.,  he  was  born  on  the  8th  August, 
1544.  We  have  seen  that  he  had  already  been  entered  at 
Gray's  Inn,  and  that  by  his  father's  will  his  education  had 
been  entrusted  to  Thomas  Thirlby,  Bishop  of  Ely,  to  which 
see  he  had  been  transferred  from  Norwich  in  July  1554. 
By  all  accounts  Thirlby  is  described  to  us  as  one  of  the 
most  accomplished  and  graceful  scholars  of  his  age.  He 
had  been  a  fellow  of  Trinity  Hall,  Cambridge,  and  his  rooms 
were  under  those  of  Bilney,  the  fervent  preacher  who  con- 
verted Latimer,  and  who  was  burnt  for  heresy  at  the  Lollard's 
Pit,  near  Norwich,  in  August  1531.  Whilst  an  undergradu- 
ate, Thirlby' s  frequent  "  playing  upon  his  recorder  for  his 
diversion  "  seems  to  have  annoyed  Bilney,  who  was  "  driven 
to  his  prayers  "  by  the  music  which  disturbed  his  reading. 
Archbishop  Cranmer  conceived  an  almost  romantic 
attachment  for  Thirlby,  "  so  that  some  thought  that  if  he 
would  have  demanded  any  finger  or  other  member  of  his,  he 
would  have  cut  it  off  to  have  gratified  him  ;  "  and  this 
affection  of  the  archbishop  soon  brought  him  preferment 
and  notice     In  1538  he  had  been  sent  on  an  embassy  to 


144  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

France,  and  from  this  time  till  the  beginning  of  Queen 
Elizabeth's  reign  he  was  constantly  employed  as 
ambassador  to  foreign  courts,  and  in  that  capacity  was 
at  various  times  dispatched  to  Spain,  Scotland,  the  Low 
Countries,  and  Germany.  He  was  concerned  in  the  com- 
pilation of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  and  was  one  of 
the  revisers  of  the  translation  of  the  Great  Bible.  He  was 
one  of  the  executors  of  Queen  Mary's  will,  and  one  of  the 
supervisors  of  Cardinal  Pole's.  When  Mary  died  he  was 
absent  from  England,  having  been  appointed  to  treat  with 
France  for  the  restoration  of  Calais,  and  he  returned  from 
that  mission  in  April  1559,  when  Queen  Elizabeth  had 
already  been  three  months  on  the  throne.  When  the  new 
Oath  of  Supremacy  was  tendered  to  him,  he  refused  to 
take  it,  and  was  immediately  deprived  of  his  bishopric,  but 
at  first  left  unmolested.  Courtier  though  he  was,  and  a 
man  apparently  by  no  means  of  a  stubborn  nature,  yet  the 
form  of  the  oath  appeared  to  him  so  offensive  that  he  felt 
called  upon  to  preach  against  it,  although  warned  to  desist. 
For  his  contumacy  he  was  excommunicated,  and  in  June 
1560  was  committed  to  the  Tower.  After  a  while  he  was 
removed  to  the  custody  of  Archbishop  Parker,  with  whom 
he  lived  at  Lambeth  and  Bekesbourne  till  his  death,  in  1570, 
and,  though  under  surveillance  and  nominally  a  prisoner, 
was  always  treated  with  marked  respect  and  consideration.^ 
When  young  William  Walpole,  on  his  father's  death, 
was  handed  over  to  Thirlby's  guardianship,  the  bishop 
adopted  him  as  a  member  of  his  own  household,  and  as 
such  he  remained  until  the  bishop's  imprisonment,  when 
he  was  received  into  the  family  of  Mr.  Blackwell,  a  cousin 
of  Thirlby's,  Town  Clerk  of  the  city  of  London,  and  a  man 
of  great  wealth  and  consideration.  When  the  bishop  was 
sent  to  the  Tower,  and  it  seemed  probable  he  would  suffer 
in  substance  as  well  as  in  person  for  his  recusancy,  he 
disposed  of  his  property,  and  sold  or  made  over  to  this 
Mr.  Blackwell  a  large  mansion  which  he  had  either  pur- 
chased or  built  in  the  parish  of  St.  Andrew  in  the  ward 
of  Castle  Baynard,  and  it  was  here  he  lived  while  WiUiam 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  145 

Walpole  made  his  home  with  him. 7  Three  months  after 
he  attained  his  majority  Walpole  married  Mr.  Blackwell's 
youngest  daughter  at  St.  Andrew's  church,  and  soon 
afterwards  appears  to  have  settled  at  Fittleworth  in 
Sussex,  though  frequently  visiting  at  the  house  of  his 
father-in-law.^ 

When  Bishop  Thirlby's  health  began  to  decline  he  begged 
for  permission  to  take  up  his  residence  at  Mr.  Blackwell's, 
but  he  died  at  Lambeth  before  he  could  remove. 9  Mr. 
Blackwell  survived  him  only  a  few  months,  and  in  his  will 
left  the  bulk  of  his  large  fortune  to  his  widow. ^°  After  his 
death  Mrs.  Blackwell  lived  sometimes  at  the  London 
mansion  and  sometimes  on  her  estate  at  North  Chapel  in 
Sussex,  where  she  had  some  large  ironworks  which  her 
son-in-law  William  Walpole  managed  for  her.  He  himself 
was  largely  concerned  in  the  manufacture  of  iron  in  the 
neighbourhood,  and  the  Sussex  ironmasters  exhibited  so 
much  activity  that  the  attention  of  the  Government  was 
drawn  to  them,  and  an  Act  of  Parliament  passed  restricting 
their  power  of  cutting  down  the  woods  for  fuel,  and  putting 
other  difficulties  in  their  way.  Walpole's  ironworks  must 
have  been  upon  a  large  scale,  for  he  had  attracted  the 
notice  of  the  Council  by  casting  cannon,  which  had  been 
exported  to  the  Continent,  and  in  February  1574  he  was 
compelled  to  give  a  bond  in  the  sum  of  £2,000  to  make  no 
more  "cast  pieces  of  ordnance  without  special  licence,  and 
in  case  of  such  licence  being  granted  "  not  to  "  sell  them 
to  any  stranger,"  unless  the  name  of  the  buyer  and  the 
number  and  description  of  the  ordnance  were  expressed  in 
the  said  licence."  This  appears  to  have  proved  the  ruin  of 
the  trade  for  a  time,  for  we  hear  no  more  of  the  Sussex  iron- 
works, and  a  year  or  two  after  this  Mr.  Walpole  appears  to 
have  left  Fittleworth  and  removed  to  his  native  county. 

When  Parsons  and  Campion  came  over  to  England  in 
1580,  Mrs.  Blackwell  was  still  living  in  London.  She  was 
one  of  those  who  conformed,  and  attended  her  parish 
church  of  St.  Andrew;  but  it  is  scarcely  to  be  wondered 
at  that  she  was  looked  upon  with  some  suspicion.     Her 

10 


146  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

husband  had  died  a  Catholic ;  she  herself  was  the  daughter 
of  Thoraas  Campion,  a  citizen  of  London,  who  was  related 
to  the  Jesuit  Father,  and  as  a  natural  consequence  was 
more  than  once  subjected  to  annoyance.  In  1584  the 
Lords  of  the  Council  issued  an  order  that  the  Countess 
of  Northumberland  should  be  received  at  Mrs.  Blackwell's 
house  at  her  coming  to  town,  and  next  year  she  was 
presented  as  a  recusant,  though  upon  her  protesting  she 
succeeded  in  excusing  herself  from  paying  the  exaction 
attempted  to  be  levied  upon  her.^^  "Whether  her  house 
was  one  of  those  many  places  in  and  about  London  to 
which  Campion  resorted — whether  there  he  met  young 
Henry  Walpole  or  his  cousin  William — it  is  almost  idle 
to  ask,  and  yet  the  probability  of  the  Jesuit  Father's  re- 
ceiving some  recognition  from  his  wealthy  kinswoman  is 
so  great  that  we  are  tempted  to  conjecture  that  it  must 
have  been  so. 

It  was  probably  in  consequence  of  the  interference  of 
the  Government  with  the  Sussex  ironworks  that  William 
Walpole,  about  the  year  1580,  left  Fittleworth.  He 
had  purchased  another  estate  in  Norfolk  not  far  from 
Dereham — the  manor  of  St.  Cleres  in  North  Tuddenham, 
with  a  large  tract  of  land  extending  into  three  or  four 
of  the  adjoining  parishes, ^s  Here  he  lived  as  a  country 
gentleman,  keeping  up  a  large  establishment ;  and  in 
February  1582  he  bought  from  Bishop  Thirlby's  nephew 
Henry  a  house  in  Norwich.  It  had  a  frontage  opposite 
the  Bishop's  palace,  with  gardens  abutting  on  the  river, 
and  had  formerly  been  the  residence  of  one  of  the  city 
aldermen. ^4  There  had  been  no  offspring  from  his  marriage, 
an  unhappy  disagreement  arose  between  him  and  his  wife, 
which  ended  at  last  in  a  separation,  and  when  Mrs. 
Blackwell  made  her  will  in  May  1585  she  expressly 
orders  that  her  son-in-law  be  called  upon  to  repay  all 
sums  of  money  that  were  due  to  her ;  and  she  leaves  an 
annuity  to  her  daughter,  to  be  paid  "  during  the  time  of 
any  breach  between  her  and  her  husband,  William 
Walpole."  ^5 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  I47 

Just  about  this  time  Edward  Walpole  of  Houghton  came 
to  reside  with  his  cousin  at  Tuddenham.  His  position  at 
home  had  become  a  painful  one :  his  parents  were  by  no 
means  inclined  to  side  with  the  Catholic  party,  but  on 
the  contrary  were  said  to  be  Puritans,  as  most  probably 
his  grandfather,  Mr.  Calibut,  was.  There  is  some  reason 
for  thinking  that  Edward  Walpole  had  adopted  decided 
views  on  the  religious  questions  of  the  day  some  years 
earlier  than  his  Catholic  biographers  have  stated ;  at  any 
rate  his  name  is  never  once  mentioned  in  the  wills  of  any 
members  of  the  family  who  died  about  this  time,  and  the 
omission  is  especially  remarkable  in  his  uncle  Eichard's 
will,  inasmuch  as  some  legacy  is  left  to  every  one  of  his 
other  nephews  and  nieces. ^^  More  tells  us  that  his  parents 
were  so  irritated  by  his  obstinate  opposition  to  their  views 
and  persistence  in  his  own  that  at  last  his  mother  fairly 
turned  him  out  of  doors ;  that  he  took  refuge  with  a  relation 
in  the  county ;  that  he  changed  his  name  to  Poor  or 
Pauper,  and  attempted  to  slip  away  to  the  Continent  as 
Henry  Walpole  had  done  two  or  three  years  before.  He 
was  stopped  at  the  port  he  was  intending  to  sail  from 
and  sent  up  to  the  Council ;  but  he  could  have  had  little 
difficulty  in  getting  released  while  Leicester  was  at  the 
zenith  of  his  power.  Foiled  in  his  attempt  to  leave 
England,  he  returned  to  Norfolk,  and  William  Walpole 
offered  him  a  home  at  St.  Cleres.'7  Here  he  set  himself 
to  bring  about  a  reconciliation  between  the  husband  and 
wife,  who  had  been  living  for  some  time  apart,  and  was 
fortunate  enough  to  succeed  in  his  object.^^  Mrs.  Walpole 
returned  to  her  husband,  and  appears  to  have  regained 
his  confidence  and  affection,  though  they  were  not  destined 
to  continue  long  united.  Perhaps  William  Walpole's  state 
of  health  may  have  had  something  to  do  with  his  removal 
from  Sussex  into  his  native  air  ;  at  any  rate  he  had  only 
been  at  Tuddenham  three  or  four  years  when  he  felt  his 
end  was  near,  and  a  few  days  before  he  had  completed 
his  forty-third  year  he  made  his  will,  and  arranged  for 
the  disposition  of  his  property  after  his  decease.     If  the 


148  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


last  act  of  a  man's  life,  and  the  only  act  which  is  irre- 
vocable, may  be  accepted  as  a  trustworthy  index  to  his 
character,  William  Walpole's  will  proves  him  to  have  been 
a  man  of  remarkable  generosity,  kindliness,  and  largeness 
of  heart.  He  had,  as  we  have  seen,  no  child,  but  he  leaves 
to  his  widow  a  splendid  provision  during  her  lifetime,  with 
no  mean  condition  to  hinder  her  marrying  again ;  his 
mother,  his  sisters,  his  uncles,  his  cousins,  every  servant 
in  his  large  establishment,  are  all  remembered  and  named, 
and  legacies  are  bequeathed  to  them  with  a  princely 
liberality.  His  real  heir  is  his  cousin  Edward  Walpole, 
to  whom  he  leaves,  on  the  death  of  his  wife,  the  great 
bulk  of  his  large  property;  and  by  the  way  in  which  he 
more  than  once  connects  his  cousin's  name  with  that  of 
his  wife,  it  is  evident  that  in  making  this  disposition  of 
his  estates  he  does  so  in  recognition  of  the  service  he 
had  rendered  him  in  bringing  to  an  end  that  unhappy 
domestic  difference  that  has  been  referred  to.  ^9 

It   is   almost  impossible   to   estimate   the   amount  of  a 
country  gentleman's  income  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and 
almost   as  difficult  to  arrive  at  the  acreage  of   an   estate 
with  anything  like  accuracy ;   but  the  lands  and  manors 
bequeathed  to  Edward  Walpole  by  his  cousin's  will  repre- 
sented a  rental  which  would  now  amount  to  at  least  £7,000 
a  year ;  and  when  he  eventually  abjured  the  realm,  it  was 
said  that  he  had  sacrificed  more  than  £800  a  year,  even  after 
he  had  sold  his  reversionary  interest  in  the  Tuddenham 
property.      Just   six   months   after   the    death  of   William 
Walpole,   John   Walpole   of    Houghton,   Edward's   father, 
died.2°     In   his   will   he   does   not   so   much  as  name  his 
eldest  son,  but  leaves   every  acre  of   land  which  he  had 
the  power  to  bequeath  to  his  second  son,  Calibut.     The 
entailed   property  at   Houghton,  Walpole,  and  Wey bread, 
in  Suffolk,  descended  to  Edward  as  his  heir,  though  subject 
to  a  life  interest  reserved  to  his  widow.     In  the  following 
September   Eobert   Earl   of    Leicester  died,   and    all    the 
Robsart  estates  descended  to  the  heir  of  Houghton ;  but 
as   John  Walpole   in   his   will   had   left   them  to  his   son 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  149 

Calibut,  Edward  at  once  made  them  over  to  him,  and 
renounced  the  claim  he  might  have  put  forth  as  heir- 
at-law.2' 

Thus  at  the  close  of  the  year  1588  the  two  brothers, 
Edward  and  Calibut  Walpole,  were  seised  as  tenants  for 
life  or  in  fee  simple  of  lands  and  tenements  in  no  less 
than  nineteen  parishes  in  the  counties  of  Norfolk  and 
Suffolk,  and  were  the  lords  of  ten  manors,  extending  over 
several  thousand  acres.  The  fortunes  of  the  house  seemed 
in  the  ascendant,  and  it  needed  only  a  little  exercise  of 
ordinary  prudence  and  a  little  worldly  wisdom  to  assure 
to  the  Walpoles  a  position  among  the  wealthiest  families 
in  the  east  of  England  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  required 
only  a  very  little  contumacy  and  a  very  little  display  of 
religious  fanaticism  to  bring  upon  them  the  full  force  of 
the  Government,  which  would  not  spare  where  there  was 
so  much  to  fall  a  prey  to  the  spoiler.  Henry  and  Eichard 
Walpole  had  already  shown  how  lightly  they  held  by  any 
worldly  prospects  that  might  be  before  them.  They  had 
turned  their  backs  upon  their  native  country,  and  their 
cousin  Edward  was  more  than  half  inclined  to  follow  them 
into  exile. 


NOTES   TO   CHAPTEK   V. 

1.  Page  140.  Rishton's  Diary,  which  is  the  authority  usually  cited 
for  this  statement,  was  first  printed  at  the  end  of  Sanders's  De  Origine 
et  Progressu  Schismatis  Anglicani,  Kome,  1690.  It  is  given  in  English  in 
Tierney's  Dodd,  vol.  ii.  p.  148.  For  additional  particulars  see  Morris's 
Troubles,  second  series,  p.  70.  Besides  the  twenty-one  who  were  ban- 
ished in  January  1585,  twenty-two  more  were  sent  from  York,  and 
thirty-two  from  London,  in  September  of  the  same  year,  making  up  a 
total  of  seventy-two  priests  and  three  laymen. — Douay  Diary,  p.  12. 

2.  Page  142.  The  following  entries  are  extracted  from  the  Parish 
Eegister  of  Docking : — 

1561,  y^  xviij  daye  of  Maye,  was  Dorothy  Walpole,  ye  daughter  of 

Christopher  Walpole,  christened. 

1562,  the  vi'^  daye  of  June,  was  Galferye  Walpole  ....  christened. 
1564,  the  viij"^  daye  of  October,  was  Richard  Walpole  ....  christened. 

theviijt'^  of  December,  was  Margarete  Walpole  ....  christened. 

1566,  the   xxv'^  of  August,  was  Thomas  Walpole,  ye  sonne  of  Mr. 

Christopher  Walpole  and  Margereye  his  wife,  cristned. 

1567,  1^'  November,  Alice  Walpole  .... 

1568,  23^^  October,  Christopher  Walpole  .... 
1570,  1^'  October,  Michael  Walpole  .... 

3.  Page  142.  He  matriculated  as  a  scholar  of  Peterhouse  1st  April, 
1579.  —  Matriculation  Book  in  the  Registry  of  the  University  of 
Cambridge. 

4.  Page  143.  The  dates  are  given  from  the  Douay  Diary  and  from 
the  MS.  Records  in  the  English  College  at  Rome. 

5.  Page  143.  Machyn  in  his  Diary  [Camden  Society,  1847)  gives 
the  following  account  of  Serjeant  Walpole's  funeral,  p.  156. 

[1577].  "The  3  day  of  November  was  buried  in  the  parish  of  St. 
Dunstan's  in  the  West,  Serjeant  Wallpoll  {sic),  a  Norfolk  man,  with  a 
pennon  and  a  coat  of  arms  borne  with  a  herald  of  arms ;  and  there  was 
all  the  Judges  and  Serjeants  of  the  coif,  and  men  of  the  law,  a  two 
hundred,  with  two  white  branches,  twelve  staff  torches,  and  four  great 
tapers,  and  priests  and  clerks ;  and  the  morrow,  the  mass  of  requiem." 
[Spelling  modernised.] 

Serjeant  Walpole  married  Jane,  daughter  of  Edmund  Knyvett,  of 
AsHWELLTHORP,  Esq.,  Serjeant  Porter  to  King  Henry  VHI.,  by  Jane, 
daughter  and  heir  of  Sir  John  Bourchier,  Knt.,  who  was  summoned  to 
Parliament  as  Lord  Berners.  The  Barony  of  Berners  came  to  the 
Knyvetts  through  this  alliance. 

150 


ONE   GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE     151 

Jane  Walpole,  the  Serjeant'f;  widow,  survived  him  many  years.  She 
married  (2ndly)  her  husband's  friend  and  executor,  Thomas  Scarlett 
[See  p.  60  ante  n.  18] ,  and  by  him  had  a  second  family  of  four  daughters. 

6.  Fage  144.  Most  of  the  details  given  are  taken  from  Cooper's 
Athence  Cantab.  See,  too,  Camden  Society's  Wills  (1863),  pp.  46  and 
52 ;  Original  Papers,  Norfolk  Archcsological  Society,  v.  p.  75. 

7.  Page  145.  "1562-3.  The — day  of  February  was  christened 
at  St.  Andrew's  in  the  Wardrobe,  George  Bacon,  the  son  of  Master 
Bacon,  Esquire,  some  time  Serjeant  of  the  Acatry  by  Queen  Mary's  days. 
His  godfathers  were  young  Master  George  Blackwell  and  Master 
Walpole.  ..."  [Mr.  George  Bacon  had  married  one  of  the  daughters 
of  Mr.  Blackwell.] — Machyn,  p.  300.  See,  too,  the  next  page  for  the 
notice  of  the  churching  of  Mrs.  Bacon  :"....  and  after,  she  went 
home  to  her  father's  house,  Mr.  Blackwell.  ..." 

8.  Page  145.  "  1565,  25°  Nov.,  William  Walpole  and  Mary  Black- 
well  were  married  at  St.  Andrew's  in  the  Wardrobe." — From  the  P.  R. 
communicated  by  Colonel  Chester. 

Among  the  Close  Rolls  in  the  P.  R.  0.  is  one  dated  11th  May,  17° 
Elizabeth,  in  which  William  Walpole,  of  Fittleworth,  eo.  Sussex,  Esq., 
enters  into  recognisances  to  pay  Richard  Butterwick,  of  Bury,  co. 
Sussex,  Gent.,  £350  on  the  24th  November  next  ensuing,  "  at  and  in  the 
mansion  house  of  one  Margaret  Blackwell."  Mr.  Butterwick  married 
William  Walpole's  sister  Catharine. 

9.  Page  145.     Bishop  Thirlby  died  in  August  1570. 

10.  Page  145.  Mr.  Blackwell's  will  is  at  Somerset  House.  It  is 
dated  7th  June,  1567,  but  was  not  proved  till  the  17th  October,  1570.  I 
subjoin  the  notes  I  took  of  it.  "...  My  soul  to  God  and  to  the  most 
blessed  and  immaculate  mother  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  our  Lady  St. 
Mary  the  Virgin,  and  to  all  the  Holy  Company  of  Heaven ;  ...  to  the 
parson  of  the  parish  of  St.  Andrew  in  the  ward  of  Castle  Baynard,  where 
I  am  a  parishioner  ;  ...  to  every  poor  godchild  ;  ...  to  my  brother- 
in-law  Edward  Warton,  Gent.  .  .  .  Executrix  shall  give  and  bestow 
forme  xij  black  gowns  with  hoods,  vj  to  the  men,  viz.,  my  son  Edward 
Blackwell,  my  son  Bacon,  my  son  Draper,  my  son  Walpole,  and  my 
brother  Campion,  to  be  given  if  it  shall  please  them  to  be  at  my  funeral 
as  mourners;  the  other  vj  to  the  women  hereunder  named,  viz.,  my 
son  Edward's  wife,  my  daughter  Bacon,  my  daughter  Draper,  my 
daughter  Walpole,  my  cousin  Ursula  Patrick,  and  my  sister  Campion.  .  . . 
To  the  prisoners  of  either  of  the  Compters  in  London  ;  ...  to  the 
prisoners  of  Ludgate ;  ...  to  the  prisoners  of  Newgate.  ...  To  the 
poor  people  of  Edgeware  in  the  county  of  Middlesex,  where  I  was  born  ; 
...  to  the  poor  of  Hendon,  co.   Middlesex.  ...  To  the  Right  Rev, 


152  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

Father  in  God,  and  my  most  singular  good  Lord  Thomas  Thirlby, 
late  Bishop  of  Ely,  for  a  poor  remembrance  of  good  heart  and  will 
towards  his  lordship,  a  gold  ring  value  five  marks.  ...  To  my  cousin 
Henry  Thirlby,  son  of  my  cousin  Thomas  Thirlby  {&%c\  ,  his  lordship's 
brother.  ...  To  every  of  my  sons,  Thomas,  William,  George,  and 
EiCHARD,  £100.  ...  To  my  daughter  Margaret  (unmarried)  £100.  .  .  . 
To  Margaret  my  wife  .  .  .  landed  property,  &c.,  in  Hendon,  co. 
Middlesex  ;  the  manor  of  '  Campions '  in  Epping,  Essex ;  .  .  . 
my  mansion  in  the  parish  of  St.  Andrew  in  the  ward  of  Castle 
Baynard.  .  .  .  Kesidue  to  be  divided  '  according  to  the  laudable  custom 
of  the  city  of  London.'  Margaret  Blackwell  sole  executrix,  Thomas 
Blackwell  supervisor." — P.  C.  C,  *'  Lyon,"  f.  30. 

11.  Page  145.  In  the  P.  R.  0.,  Domestic,  Elizabeth,  vol.  95,  No. 
21,  there  is  a  list  of  persons  who  own  iron  forges  and  furnaces  in  the 
county  of  Sussex,  dated  15th  February,  1573-4.  Among  those  mentioned 
are  the  following:  "The  late  Earl  of  Northumberland  one  forge  and 
one  furnace  in  Petworth  great  park,  in  the  hands  of  Mrs.  Blackwell. 
Mrs.  Blackwell  a  forge  and  a  furnace  in  North  Chappell." 

In  the  same  volume  (No.  79),  under  the  date  of  22nd  February,  I  find 
"  William  Walpole  having  the  occupying  of  a  furnace  and  a  forge  in  the 
parish  of  Petworth  in  the  county  of  Sussex,  belonging  to  one  Margaret 
Blackwell  of  London  city,  wife  to  William  Blackwell,  Town  Clerk  of 
the  said  city,  by  the  grant  of  the  said  Margaret  during  pleasure,  having 
married  one  of  her  daughters." 

The  bond  referred  to  in  the  text  is  dated  Hampton  Court,  22nd 
February,  16°  Eliz.  "The  condition  that  the  above-named  William 
Walpole  shall  hereafter  make  no  manner  of  cast  pieces  of  Ordnance  of 
Iron  without  special  licence,  and  in  case  of  such  licence  being  granted, 
shall  not  sell  them  to  any  stranger  unless  the  said  stranger's  name  and 
quality  and  the  number  and  name  of  the  said  Ordnance  to  be  sold  shall 
be  expressed  in  the  said  licence."  The  bond  is  signed  and  sealed  with 
the  Walpole  arms,  on  which  is  a  label  with  a  crescent  for  the  second 
house. 

The  ironworks  in  Sussex  were  carried  on  for  many  years  after  this, 
and  on  a  large  scale.  By  the  Act  of  23°  Eliz.  c.  v.,  certain  restrictions 
are  laid  upon  the  cutting  down  of  "  woods  growing  within  a  certain 
compass  of  London  ...  to  be  converted  into  coals  for  iron  works." 
Four  years  after  another  Act  was  passed,  27°  Eliz.  c.  xix.,  entitled  "  An 
Act  for  the  preservation  of  timber  in  the  wealds  of  the  counties  of 
Sussex,  Surrey,  and  Kent,  and  for  the  amendment  of  highways  decayed 
by  carriages  to  and  from  iron  mills  there."  Even  as  late  as  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century  the  manufacture  of  iron  was  carried  on 
extensively  in  this  district,  and  the  iron  railings  which  surrounded  St. 
Paul's  churchyard,  and  which  have  only  been  recently  removed,  were 
made  of  Sussex  iron.    Mrs.  Blackwell's  father,  Thomas  Campion,  may 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE 


well  be  thesame  a= '' Mr,  Ci"-=  -  -'        —   :      -'-  -- -~  the  Master 
of  the  Bolls,  the  Dean  o:  V.^    r  :;  •:;.„..  .„  ^igTistlSTS- 

Cf.  Wrist's  Elizabeth  and  R-.    .       .,  v :    19. 

12.  Fage  146.  P.  P..  0..  IhymeitU,  Elizabeth,  voL  184,  No.  46.  On 
the  iron  manof  ac:iire  o:  ihe  Weald,  see  Beport  of  Prehistoric  CoogreaB 
held  a*  Ncr— ::>  \^A'-  :  a  paper  bj  W.  Boyd  Da— Vri.  e^p^ial^,  p.  187. 

Mrs.   E'.i;':^-=...  £   p.i:.::on   to  the  Lords  of  ;'::e   C:-l:..  is  da*ed  ^th 

13.  P-:;:  14':.  Tnr  nrii-h::-;::' : :  2  --;.s  -.rn^e.y  -::•:-:  s  :Trv:r7  i^o, 
and  I  h.\"  r  v/::'  -:::^  in  :'i  ir.i.i': ::ir.:  :'  -.':^z  -■  ...z.:':  •  !i:-r  'i.:irr 
used  M   ir..   :i-:.-      i    ::!■;   :i:u.:-i=    -u:::. .=    :^    "ir-rj    r-ri.:;^:    .'.7   .-....'.? 

owner  of  the  pr;ic.:7  ^::  :::::  Lc:i..  ;.:7  i.i::-!::r  =  .  I:ii  :^i  : 
hou5€  was  iVhrAir^s  :.6n  or  twelve  Te^rs  i^-:.  ^.-i  ".hen  inhahite 
farmer.  The  f:  •.::::".  i:.::  :::s  and  a  ;::::::::  :'  :ce  -;.h=  still  rema: 
the  ground-pl^n  Oi  ;j:e  rr.mEion  is  eL::.7  :.i:T.;^e  I:  ~i.e  2.  b: 
nogreatsize,  ~i:b  ?.  :::-:.;.^e  :f  i:;::  Eevr-:7  'eri,  :.-:.  r:;r:::- 
a  doable  mii:    -::  ;i.  E::h  ei:  =  :E      t-  :-::.l'.-2  ieein    i.  -j  z:im 


appeiffs  :i.i:  .•.:£.  i.i:£  ■■"■;„  z-.i  ..-i':ii£  ..z  -•'::i:i  i-iiei_ii. — .  ie:»:e 
William  Wi:p::r  line  ::  i-siie  ::ir:e. 

14.  Pa:-:  U^.  This  appear;  b"  in  indenture.  ma.!e  Ihe  14:i:  Fe:r-:irT 
in  the  24:n  ve^r   ;:  Elizabeth,  irt^ee-   Ez:y?,T  Te:7.1zT   ;'  Eer-i:"    ::. 

TrDDE>-:E:AM  in  the  c:t:'t7  ci  N;r-::li:.  E;:..  :i  tie  ::'::r:  -:ar:  .  .  . 
Hekbt  Tsebi-bt  £-hE  t:  VTi-l-a::  vr^i.?:!,!  ■•  Ah  that  :ae  MeEiuire  ^:., 
...  in  Norwich,  in  the  Parish  :i  St.  Maxtin  be::rr  the  Gates  ;:  the 
Palace  of  :he  Bishop  :f  N:r~i-h,  as  thev  he  :et~ee-  the  ::~.~:z  .ane 
on  the  wes:  pan  and  the  tenement  stnethire  P..;ziEr  GE.2sy's.  Citize- 
and  Alderman  of  Ncr~::h,  a:t.t  ';.te  ?r.:~j.y.z  C±nr;r.  Getttlen an.  ;r.  the 
east  par;,  and  it  ahtitteth  ::'.:::  tie  hi^r's  river  t:-aris  the  ntrtc.  a-i 
upon  :he  kinr's  hirh-a7  :;v,-^,.i£  -..-e  south.  X2.,  sc." — P.  P..  0.,  Ci;s.e 
Rolls,  24-  Eh2a:eth.  pt.  13. 

15.  F^:c  146.  Her  ':Ti::  is  iatel  14th  Mav.  I'^o.  an:  -as  prr-re-f  :n 
the  4m  Julv.  lo>6.  .  .  .  T;  S:r  l5::-:j.i  Ij.:::iz':.  Enight.  Ltri  Chan- 
cellor :f  Er.riar.1  ar.i  t:  the  L.kii  EitZiiirH  his  '-I'e  ntj  esp-eoiai 
stooq  iwrai.i.'a-— av,  a;iip,'-r.-.^rr.   .      .   .t  —  _■  n  r  ^  r .  _•  r . . ..     —  ^^ —  . .  •  r . 

and  being  in  the  i.r.::sh  0:  St.  A.r.ire-  ir.  the  vrara  :t  Castie  ra7ia.i. 
.  .  .  wh::h  sa:a  n:.^ns::n  —7  hastano  Wiia.ii..ii  Bla;z-iii  h;a=:n:  ot 
my  honoured  Eather  in  G:.i  1^:::::^=  Ihit.izt  ia:e  Eish;^  ::  Ei7  ,  .  . 
[AxxE  Bacos  vo  hc:i  it  ::r  ihree  vears.  ana  ti:-n  ;:  tr  s:i^  .^n  i  the 
proceed?  10  bir  .:.v.ar.i  i.^;  ■  ..n  zy:  ..n.i.  _r.  :.-:nr.  '••hii.i-Ni:  hi-i.:a-a_j 


154  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

..."  and  for  the  help  and  succour  which  my  will  is  she  shall  be  to 
her  sister  Maky  Walpole  another  of  my  daughters,  if  occasion  shall  so 
require,  viz.,  to  allow  her  yearly  xxZi.  during  the  time  of  any  breach 
between  her  and  her  husband  William  Walpole.  ...  To  William 
Blackwell  all  my  debts  and  money  whatsoever  which  my  son-in-law 
William  Walpole  doth  owe  unto  me  at  this  present,  or  which  shall 
hereafter  grow  to  be  due  unto  me  from  my  said  son  William  Walpole 
.  .  .—P.  C.  C,  "Windsor,"  f.  37.  The  property  bequeathed  in  the 
counties  of  Sussex,  Hants,  Surrey,  Essex,  and  Middlesex  is  very  large. 
The  will  affords  a  curious  and  important  confirmation  of  the  story  first 
told  by  Dr.  Henry  More  of  the  estrangement  between  William  Walpole 
and  his  wife. 

16.  Fage  147.  The  omission  is  the  more  remarkable,  because 
KiCHARD  Walpole's  will  was  proved  in  London  on  the  10th  May,  1568, 
when  his  nephew  William  could  not  have  been  more  than  ten  years  old. 
— See  c.  iii.  n.  (9) 

17.  Fage  147.  Yepez,  writing  in  1599  (and  at  a  time  when  one  or 
other  of  the  three  brothers  Richard,  Christopher,  or  Michael  Walpole 
must  have  been  in  Spain,  and  pretty  sure  to  be  in  communication  with 
him),  says  distinctly  that  Henry  Walpole  laboured  for  more  than  two 
years  to  convert  his  co2isin  :  Edward  Walpole  certainly  did  not  take  any 
degree  at  Cambridge,  which  in  the  natural  course  of  things  he  could  have 
done  in  1579.  It  looks  as  if  his  refusal  to  proceed  to  the  B.A.,  which 
necessitated  the  taking  of  the  oath,  had  been  the  cause  of  the  indignation 
of  his  parents,  who  by  all  accounts  acted  in  a  violent  and  indiscreet 
manner.  More  tells  us  that,  after  having  been  unsettled  for  a  long  time, 
the  reading  of  Fulke's  answer  to  Cardinal  Allen's  book  on  Purgatory 
produced  a  profound  effect  upon  his  mind.  Dr.  Fulke's  Confutation  of 
the  Popish  Churches  Doctrine  touching  Purgatory  and  Prayers  for  the 
Dead  was  published  in  1577,  so  that  it  was  after  this  year. — Yepez,  Hist. 
Partic.  de  la  Persec.  de  Inglaterra,  p.  668.  Historia  3Iis$ionis  Anglican^ 
.  .  .  Collectore  Henrico  Moro,  folio,  St.  Omer,  1660,  f.  202. 

18.  Page  147.  See  note  15.  More  mentions  the  circumstance  without 
naming  the  cousins  whom  he  had  succeeded  in  reconciling;  and 
until  the  discovery  of  Mrs.  Blackwell's  will  nothing  was  known  of  the 
affair. 

19.  Page  148.  His  will  is  in  Register^  "Spencer,"  f.  80,  P.  C.  C.  .  .  . 
I  William  Walpole,  of  North  Tuddenham  in  the  County  of  Norfolk, 
Esquire,  .  .  .  my  Manor  of  North  Tuddenham  alias  St.  Clere's,  .  .  .  and 
all  my  lands,  tenements,  &c,,  in  North  Tuddenham,  Elsinq,  Hockering, 
and  Mattishall,  .  .  .  and  my  Manor  of  Felthams  in  Great  Massinq- 
ham,  .  .  .  and  all  my  lands  and  tenements  ...  in  Great  Massinoham 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  155 


and  Little  Massingham  unto  Mary  my  well-beloved  wife  for  term  of  her 
life  .  .  .  the  remainder  thereof  unto  my  cousin  Ejjward  Walpole  ;  .  .  . 
to  William  Bettice  my  servant,  house  and  land  in  Great  Massingham  ; 
...  to  Martin  Diat  my  servant,  messuage,  lands,  and  tenement  in 
Little  Massingham  ;  ...  to  my  cousin  John  Walpole  the  son  of  my 
uncle  Thomas  Walpole,  deceased,  my  Manor  of  Calis  alias  Porters  in 
Houghton,  .  .  .  and  all  my  lands,  &c.,  &c.,  in  Harpley,  Houghton, 
BiRCHAM,  and  Rudham,  to  him  and  his  heirs,  and  in  default  of  issue, 
or  if  it  shall  happen  the  said  John  Walpole  or  any  the  heirs  of  his  body 
.  .  .  to  commit,  do,  or  suffer  any  act  .  .  .  to  discontinue  .  .  .  the  foresaid 
estate  to  the  said  John  or  any  the  heirs  males  of  his  body  .  .  .  whereby 
the  said  estate  in  tail  shall  be  discontinued  .  .  .  then  I  will  the  said  manors, 
d-c,  shall  remain  to  my  said  cousin  Edward  Walpole  ;  .  .  .to  Katherine 
my  well-beloved  mother,  certain  lands  in  Harpley  and  Denton  .  .  . 
remainder  to  Edward  Walpole  .  .  .  Manor  of  Borough  Hall  in 
HiLLiNGTON  and  lands,  &c.,  in  Hillington,  Congham,  and  East  Dereham, 
and  all  lands  and  houses,  &c.,  in  Norwich,  to  be  sold  for  purposes  of  will ; 
...  to  my  sisters  Ursula  Scarlett  and  Martha  Scarlett,  lands  and 
tenements  in  Brancaster  ;  ...  to  Mary  Houghton  my  sister ;  ...  to  Jane 
Ryvett  my  sister  ;  ...  to  Bridgett  Houghell  my  sister  ;  ...  to  Anne 
Stead  my  sister ;  .  .  .  I  ordain  executors  .  .  .  Sir  Thomas  Knyvett,  Knt., 
and  Thomas  Farmour,  Esq.  .  .  .  Whereas  William  Yelverton,  Esq., 
deceased  .  .  .  willed  recompense  to  be  made  to  me  for  certain  lands 
in  Rougham,  containing  about  xxv.  acres,  which  in  right  appertained 
to  me  .  .  .  such  recompense  to  go  to  Edward  Walpole  my  cousin  .  .  . 
to  "Anthony  Browne,  Esq.,  and  Anne  his  wife,  my  two  Spanish  bowls 
of  silver  parcel  gilt,  and  one  pair  of  andirons,  and  a  back  of  a  chimney 
of  castiron  standing  in  the  hall"  {probably  made  at  the  Sussex  iron- 
works) ;  ...  to  Edmund  Call  my  late  servant  .  .  .  ;  to  James  Howes  ; 
...  to  the  residue  of  my  men  servants  ten  shillings  a  piece ;  .  .  . 
to  every  of  my  women  servants  five  shillings  a  piece,  except  to 
Catherine  Hule,  to  whom  four  marks;  ...  to  William  Michell,  my 
godson,  and  Mary  his  wife,  eight  acres  in  Little  Massingham  ;  .  .  . 
to  the  poor  of  North  Tuddenham,  Harpley,  Great  Massingham,  and 
Hillington  ;  ...  to  my  uncle  Edmund  Knyvett. — Executed  8  October, 
1587.  .  .  .  Witnesses,  William  Browne,  Anthony  Browne,  Charles 
Yelverton. — Here  follows  a  "Testament"  or  Codicil: — I  do  clearly 
forgive  my  servant  Edward  Parham  all  such  sums  of  money  and  other 
things  as  he  have  of  mine  in  his  hands ;  ...  to  the  children  of  my 
brother  Butterwick  and  of  my  late  sister  Catherine  his  wife ; — to 
Agnes  Michell  my  late  nurse  .  .  .  ;— Residue  to  be  divided  into  four 
parts; — one  part  unto  Mary  my  wife  and  my  said  cousin  Edward 
Walpole  ; — the  second  part  to  my  uncle  Christopher  Walpole  and  his 
children ; — the  third  part  to  my  brother-in-law  Thomas  Ryvett  and  Jane 
his  wife,  my  sister; — the  fourth  part  to  my  cousin  John  Walpole  of 
Houghton,  Esq.,  and  to  his  children.    All  to  submit  to  the  advice  of 


156    ONE   GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE 

Richard  Howell,  whose  costs  are  to  be  assured  him.  To  Thomas 
ScABLETT,  Gent,  (his  step-father).  .  .  .  Revokes  appointment  of  Sir 
Thomas  Knyvett  as  executor  and  appoints  in  his  room  John  Walpole, 
Esq.,  of  Houghton. 

20.  Vage  148.     His  will  was  proved  at  Norwich  13th  April,  1588. — 
Consistory,  "Homes,"  f.  206. 

21.  Page  149.    This  appears  from  the  case  laid  before  Sir  Matthew 
Hale,  that  has  been  already  referred  to. 


CHAPTEE  VI 


JOHN    GERARD 


"  Surely,  Sir, 
There's  in  him  stuff  that  puts  him  to  these  ends." 

Hennj  VIII. 

A  FEW  weeks  after  the  annihilation  of  the  great  Armada, 
when  the  heart  of  England  was  stirred  with  exultant  grati- 
tude for  the  deliverance  wrought  and  the  victory  gained — 
when,  too,  with  the  rising  tide  of  indignation  against  the 
arrogance  of  Spain,  there  had  coroe  a  wave  of  very  angry 
feeling  and  resentment  against  the  Pope  of  Eome  and  all 
who  were  disposed  to  listen  to  his  claims — a  young  English- 
man of  gentle  birth,  rare  tact,  courage,  and  abihty,  landed 
by  night  on  the  coast  of  Norfolk,  his  desire  and  ambition 
being  to  labour  for  the  conversion  of  England,  to  administer 
the  sacrament  to  faithful  Catholics  spite  of  all  the  terrors  of 
the  law,  and  to  act  as  a  missionary  of  what  he  believed  to 
be  the  truth,  wherever  the  opportunity  should  be  offered 
him. 

John  Gerard  was  the  son  of  Sir  Thomas  Gerard  of  Bryn, 
in  Lancashire,  a  gentleman  of  great  wealth  and  consideration 
in  his  native  county  ;  boasting  of  a  long  line  of  ancestors, 
and  connected  by  blood  or  marriage  with  many  of  the  most 
powerful  houses  in  the  North  of  England ;  his  brother 
Thomas  was  created  a  baronet  on  the  first  institution  of  the 
order  in  1611  by  James  I.,  and  from  him  the  present  Lord 
Gerard  is  lineally  descended.  For  generations  the  Gerards 
had  been  numbered  among  the  knightly  families,  but  in 
Queen  Elizabeth's  time  they  were  pronounced  and  uncom- 
promising  Recusants.     Sir   Thomas   had   suffered   a  long 

imprisonment  for  conscience'  sake,  and  his  estate  had  been 

157 


158  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

heavily  burdened  by  the  charges  and  fines  levied  upon  him. 
His  son  John's  earliest  recollections  were  associated  with 
his  father  either  being  thrown  into  jail  or  being  released  ; 
and  he  himself  had  had  the  experience  of  more  than  a  year's 
imprisonment  in  the  Marshalsea,  whither  he  had  been  sent, 
shortly  after  coming  of  age,  for  attempting  to  leave  the 
country  without  a  licence  from  the  Crown. ^ 

He  was  born  in  1564,  and  brought  up  at  home  by  a 
private  tutor,  who  resided  in  the  house,  and  who  appears 
to  have  taught  him  very  little.  This  deficiency  in  his  early 
training  proved  a  serious  hindrance  to  him  in  after  life,  and 
the  inconvenience  of  it  he  has  himself  deplored.  But  if  he 
never  became  a  man  of  learning  or  a  scholar,  if  the  habits 
of  a  student  seem  never  to  have  been  much  to  his  taste,  he 
learned  other  accomplishments  in  his  boyhood  which  in  the 
sequel  served  his  purpose  better  than  any  scholarship  could 
have  done.  He  learned  to  sit  a  horse  and  train  a  falcon, 
knew  all  the  tricks  and  terms  and  slang  of  the  hunting  field, 
became  an  adept  at  field  sports,  and  was  familiar  with  the 
pastimes  and  polite  accomplishments  of  town  and  country 
life.  A  year  before  Campion  and  Parsons  had  landed, 
young  Gerard  was  sent  to  Exeter  College,  Oxford,  but 
apparently,  in  consequence  of  the  increased  strictness  in 
forcing  the  oath  and  exacting  conformity  while  the  excite- 
ment of  the  first  Jesuit  mission  was  at  its  height,  he  left 
Oxford  after  a  little  more  than  a  year's  residence,  and  seems 
to  have  passed  the  next  year  or  two  in  idling  or  amusing 
himself.  While  at  Oxford  he  had  been  placed  under  the 
tuition  of  a  Mr.  Leutner,  or  Lucknor,  a  devout  and  zealous 
Catholic,  one  of  the  fellows  of  Exeter,  and  who  subsequently 
resigned  his  fellowship  and  retired  to  Belgium,  where  he 
died.  Gerard  accompanied  his  old  tutor  to  the  Continent, 
being  desirous  of  gaining  a  mastery  over  the  French 
language,  and  of  otherwise  improving  himself.  He  took 
up  his  residence  at  Kheims,  and  for  three  years  attended 
the  lectures  at  the  English  college,  although  he  did  not  enter 
himself  as  a  regular  student,  and  was  left  to  pursue  his  own 
method  of  study  as  he  chose.     The  result  was  that  he  read 


I 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  159 

a  great  deal,  but  in  a  desultory  and  random  way  ;  his  tastes 
leading  him  to  attend  the  divinity  lectures,  and  to  spend  his 
time  upon  the  works  of  the  mystical  writers  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  While  leading  this  aimless  and  unsatisfactory  life, 
he  formed  a  friendship  with  a  young  man  whose  name  he 
does  not  give,  which  proved  a  crisis  in  his  career ;  and  under 
this  influence  his  religious  convictions  became  profoundly 
intensified.  He  was  living  with  his  new  friend  in  lodgings 
at  Eheims,  when,  to  use  his  own  words,  "  about  twenty 
years  of  age  I  heard  the  call  of  God's  infinite  mercy  and 
loving  kindness,  inviting  me  from  the  crooked  ways  of  the 
world  to  the  straight  path,  to  the  perfect  following  of  Christ 
in  His  holy  Society."  It  is  a  significant  fact,  explain  it  as 
we  may,  that  in  the  latter  half  of  the  sixteenth  century  the 
"  call  of  God  "  for  young  Englishmen  of  culture  and  birth, 
who  were  Catholics,  meant  almost  invariably  a  call  to  enter 
the  Society  of  Jesus ;  so  completely  had  the  new  order 
attracted  to  itself  all  the  choice  and  lofty  spirits  among  the 
Catholics,  and  so  wonderfully  had  the  Fathers  of  the  Society 
impressed  the  minds  of  men  with  a  belief  in  their  sanctity, 
self-abnegation,  and  the  sincerity  of  their  devotion  to  a  great 
cause.^ 

Shortly  after  this  crisis  in  his  life  he  was  seized  with  a 
dangerous  illness  while  at  Claremont  College  in  Paris,  and 
on  his  recovery  he  put  himself  in  communication  with 
Father  Parsons,  explaining  to  him  his  desire  to  join  the 
Society.  Parsons,  with  characteristic  astuteness,  advised  him 
before  t'aking  the  final  step  to  return  to  England  and  settle 
his  affairs,  as  he  had  some  property  it  was  necessary  to  dis- 
pose of.  He  took  his  advice  and  went,  and  having  finished 
his  business  he  attempted  to  slip  out  of  the  country ;  but 
the  vessel  he  sailed  in  was  compelled  to  put  back  by  stress 
of  weather,  and  he  was  arrested,  sent  up  to  London,  and 
thrown  into  prison.  After  an  incarceration  of  more  than  a 
year  he  managed  to  get  free,  and  made  the  best  of  his  way 
to  France,  and  thence  to  Eome.  Cardinal  i.\llen  had  the 
sagacity  to  see  how  much  there  was  in  this  young  zealot, 
and  at  once  made  choice  of  him  as  a  valuable  emissary  to 


i6o  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

use  in  England ;  and  although  he  was  some  months  under 
the  canonical  age,  he  obtained  a  dispensation  from  the  Pope, 
and  procured  his  admission  to  priest's  orders  in  the  summer 
of  1588.  On  the  15th  of  August  in  the  same  year  he  was 
received  as  a  novice  into  the  Society,  and  a  few  weeks  after- 
w^ards  was  sent  upon  his  mission  to  England.3 

John  Gerard  was  now  twenty-four  years  of  age.  In 
person  he  was  tall,  erect,  and  well-set;  his  complexion  dark, 
his  eyes  with  a  strange  piercing  look  in  them,  a  prominent 
nose,  full  lips,  and  hair  that  hung  in  long  curls ;  '*  his  beard 
cut  close,  saving  little  mustachios  and  a  little  tuft  under  his 
flower  lip."  He  was  particular  in  his  dress,  and  rather 
affected  gay  clothing.  At  his  ease  in  any  society,  he  could 
accommodate  himself  with  consummate  adroitness  to  what- 
ever company  he  found  himself  in ;  always  courteous,  he 
yet  knew  when  to  assert  himself  with  decision  ;  in  speech 
deliberate  and  not  voluble,  he  had  the  gift  of  holding  his 
tongue  when  it  was  the  time  to  be  silent  :  when  it  was  time 
to  speak  he  weighed  his  words  and  could  use  them  well. 
Such  was  this  remarkable  man,  a  man  whose  influence  was 
destined  to  make  itself  felt  to  an  extraordinary  extent  in  the 
upper  ranks  of  English  society  for  the  next  seventeen  years, 
and  who,  though  he  was  dogged  and  hunted  by  a  legion  of 
spies,  with  a  price  set  upon  his  head,  yet  died  quietly  in  his 
bed  at  last.  Meantime,  however,  he  passed  through  im- 
minent perils  and  hairbreadth  escapes ;  he  was  apprehended 
in  1594,  and  flung  into  the  Tower ;  here  he  was  exposed  to 
the  horrible  agony  of  being  hung  up  by  the  wrists  to  the 
roof  of  his  dungeon  for  hours,  and  when  he  fainted  under 
the  cruel  torture  he  was  let  down  and  restored  to  conscious- 
ness only  to  be  tortured  again  and  again.  The  amazing 
nerve  and  courage  of  the  man  did  not  fail  him  for  a  moment 
in  this  fearful  ordeal ;  and  although  the  strain  was  so  fierce 
that  he  lost  the  use  of  his  hands  for  months,  and  the  very 
jailers  were  moved  at  the  sight  of  his  sufferings,  not  a  word 
could  be  wrung  from  him  to  implicate  or  compromise  associ- 
ate or  friend.  He  escaped  from  the  Tower  in  1597,  and  at 
once  returned  to  what  he  believed  to  be  his  duty — comfort- 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  i6i 


ing  the  persecuted,  confessing  the  penitent,  visiting  the 
desolate  whose  convictions  were  opposed  to  the  dominant 
creed,  administering  the  sacraments,  although  to  do  so  was, 
ipso  facto,  to  incur  the  penalty  of  death  ;  holding  his  life  in 
his  hand,  yet  always  cheerful,  fearless,  and  unwearied;  never 
swerving  from  the  path  which  seemed  to  him  a  path  that 
God  had  marked  out  for  him  ;  if  under  a  delusion  and  in 
error,  yet  true  to  his  convictions  and  consistent  in  his  aims 
— an  example  so  far,  and  a  reproach  to  most  of  us  who 
think  our  faith  so  much  purer  than  his,  while  our  lives  can 
bear  so  much  less  to  be  tried  and  weighed  in  the  balance.^ 

When  Gerard  wrote  the  account  of  himself  and  his 
mission  to  England,  the  events  he  recorded  were  so  recent 
that  it  was  necessary  to  conceal  the  names  of  many  of  his 
friends,  who  were  still  alive  in  England  and  liable  to  be 
called  to  account  at  any  moment  for  having  befriended  him 
ten  or  fifteen  years  before ;  but  by  careful  study  of  his 
narrative,  and  by  the  help  of  documents  which  have  only 
lately  come  to  light,  we  are  able  to  follow  his  movements 
pretty  closely,  so  far  as  his  sojourn  in  Norfolk  is  concerned. 
He  landed,  as  has  been  said,  in  the  end  of  October  1588, 
at  a  point  on  the  Norfolk  coast  between  Happisburgh  and 
Bacton,  and  after  passing  the  night  with  his  companion. 
Father  Oldcorne,  in  a  wood,  where  they  were  soaked  with  the 
rain  and  half  perished  with  the  cold,  the  two  separated  at 
dawn,  Father  Oldcorne  keeping  to  the  coast  until  he  arrived 
at  Mundesley,  where  he  joined  a  company  of  sailors  who 
were  making  their  way  to  London,  and,  casting  in  his  lot 
with  them,  was  allowed  to  pass  unchallenged  by  the 
searchers  and  officers  who  were  everywhere  on  the  look  out 
for  Seminarists  and  Jesuits  from  abroad.  Gerard  turned 
his  back  upon  the  sea,  made  for  the  nearest  village,  and 
after  dexterously  getting  all  the  information  he  could  pick 
up  from  labourers  in  the  field  and  any  one  he  met,  he  at  last 
boldly  went  to  a  village  inn,  probably  at  Sloley  or  Stalham, 
where  he  passed  the  night,  and  ingratiated  himself  with  the 
innkeeper  by  buying  a  pony  which  the  man  wanted  to  sell. 
Next  morning  he  rode  off  on  his  new  purchase,  and  while 

II 


i62  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


passing  through  a  village,  probably  Worstead,  he  was 
stopped  and  told  he  must  give  an  account  of  himself  to  the 
constable  and  the  beadle  of  the  place.  Here  he  was  in 
great  danger  of  being  taken  before  a  magistrate ;  but  as  this 
would  have  involved  some  trouble  to  the  officials,  for  there 
evidently  was  no  magistrate  in  the  immediate  neighbourhood, 
and  as  he  adopted  a  defiant  and  imperious  manner,  the 
beadle  let  him  go  on  his  road,  the  man  of  birth  and  educa- 
tion proving  too  much  for  the  plebeian,  who  was  only 
accustomed  to  deal  with  members  of  his  own  class. 

Gerard  trotted  away  on  his  pony,  well  pleased  to  have 
escaped  his  first  peril.  The  place  of  his  landing  had  been 
singularly  favourable  for  him.  If  he  had  left  the  ship 
ten  miles  farther  to  the  northward  he  would  have  been 
compelled  to  pass  through  North  Walsham  or  Aylsham 
on  his  way  to  Norwich,  and  would  have  been  almost 
infallibly  detained  by  the  searchers  at  either  of  these  towns  ; 
but  as  it  was  he  had  only  inconsiderable  villages  to  go 
through,  and  had  very  little  to  fear  until  he  should  arrive 
at  the  cathedral  city.  On  the  high  road  he  caught  up  a 
packman  who  was  also  journeying  to  Norwich,  and  the 
two  rode  together  for  some  miles.  Gerard  got  from  him 
all  the  information  he  required,  and  taking  the  advice  of 
his  new  friend  he  avoided  entering  the  city  by  St. 
Augustine's  Gates,  and  crossing  the  river  at  Hellesdon 
he  made  a  circuit  of  the  walls,  entered  by  the  Brazen 
Doors,  close  to  the  present  Militia  Barracks,  and  came  to 
an  inn  which  the  packman  had  told  him  of — one  of  the 
many  inns  on  the  Market  Hill  "  within  a  stone's  throw 
of  the  castle. "5  Here  he  put  up,  and  while  he  was  sitting 
in  the  chimney  corner  his  next  piece  of  good  fortune 
happened  to  him.  The  Eecusants  who  had  been  com- 
mitted to  the  castle  ten  years  before  were  still  incarcerated 
there,  subject  to  every  kind  of  vexation  and  imposition, 
and  suffering  severely  in  their  estates  by  their  long  de- 
tention. They  were,  however,  occasionally  allowed  to  go 
out  of  the  prison  for  a  few  days  at  a  time,  and  it  chanced 
that  when  Gerard  had  arrived  io  Norwich  one  of  them  had 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  163 

just  received  his  liberty  for  a  brief  interval  to  look  after 
some  matters  of  private  business.^  He  came  to  the  inn 
where  Gerard  was  staying,  and  attracted  his  attention 
by  naming  a  gentleman  who  had  been  a  fellow-prisoner 
with  Gerard  in  the  Marshalsea  some  years  before.  Gerard 
inquired  who  he  was,  and  found  out  that  he  was  a  stubborn 
Eecusant  who  had  been  in  prison  for  many  years  for 
his  religion.  This  was  enough :  it  was  not  long  before 
he  had  told  his  new  acquaintance  that  he  was  a  Catholic 
like  himself,  and  anxious  to  make  his  way  to  London. 
Could  he  help  him  ?  Of  course  the  man  who  himself  had 
been  in  jail  for  ten  years  could  hardly  assist  another  at 
so  critical  a  moment,  but  he  would  tell  him  of  some  one 
who  could,  and  would  introduce  him  to  one  whose  power 
was  greater  and  inclination  no  less  sincere  than  his  own. 
That  very  day  a  gentleman  was  coming  into  Norwich, 
as  zealous  an  enthusiast  as  himself,  and  who,  although 
he  had  not  yet  suffered  for  his  opinions,  was  prepared 
to  do  so  if  the  times  should  require  the  sacrifice. 

Gerard  has  concealed  the  name  of  this  friend,  but  there  is 
now  no  difficulty  in  identifying  him  as  Edward  Yelverton, 
son  of  William  Yelverton,  Esquire,  of  Eougham,  and  as  the 
circumstances  of  his  meeting  Gerard  and  his  subsequent 
close  connection  with  him  produced  important  results,  not 
only  to  the  fortunes  of  the  Walpole  family  but  to  the 
interests  of  the  Catholic  party  in  Norfolk  for  the  next 
twenty  years,  it  may  be  advisable  here  to  give  some 
account  of  so  conspicuous  a  personage. 

William  Yelverton  of  Eougham  was  one  of  the  richest 
men  in  the  county  of  Norfolk.  He  was  twice  married,  and 
by  both  wives  had  a  large  family.7  His  children  had 
almost  all  married  into  the  wealthiest  and  most  influential 
families  in  the  Eastern  Counties.  From  his  second  son, 
Sir  Christopher  Yelverton,  who  was  one  of  the  Justices 
of  the  King's  Bench,  the  Viscounts  Longueville  and  Earls 
of  Sussex  are  descended,  from  a  daughter  of  which  noble 
house  the  present  Lord  Calthorpe  traces  his  lineage.  His 
eldest  son,  Henry,  had  mamed  a  daughter  of  Sir  William 


i64  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

Drury  of  Halstead,  whose  son  was  created  a  baronet  in 
1620.  Another  son,  Charles,  was  knighted  by  Queen 
Elizabeth,  and  one  of  his  daughters,  who  had  first  married 
Thomas  Le  Strange  of  Hunstanton,  had  allied  herself  two 
years  before  Gerard's  arrival  with  Philip  Wodehouse,  son 
and  heir  of  Sir  Eoger  Wodehouse  of  Kimberley,  ancestor 
of  the  present  Earl.^  Edward  Yelverton  was  the  eldest 
son  of  his  father's  second  wife,  Jane,  daughter  of  Edmund 
Cocket  of  Hempton,  co.  Suffolk,  Esq.,  and  had  inherited  at 
his  father's  death,  by  virtue  of  a  marriage  settlement,  a 
considerable  estate  in  Grimston  and  the  adjoining  parishes, 
extending  over  between  two  and  three  thousand  acres.  Here 
he  lived  according  to  the  fashion  of  the  time,  keeping 
open  house,  and  having  as  inmates,  besides  his  own  family, 
a  younger  brother,  a  sister  who  had  lately  been  left  a 
widow,  who  acted  as  his  housekeeper,  and  a  brother-in-law 
whose  name  I  have  as  yet  failed  to  discover.9  As  has  been 
said,  he  had  been  at  Cambridge  with  the  two  cousins 
Edward  and  Henry  Walpole,  and  was  a  little  their  senior, 
being  now  about  thirty  years  of  age.  He  had  lost  his 
first  wife  shortly  after  his  marriage,  and  when  his  sister 
Jane  was  left  a  widow  by  the  death  of  Edward  Lummer 
of  Mannington,  co.  Norfolk,  in  1588,  with  a  very  scanty 
provision  and  with  her  marriage  portion  squandered,  he 
had  offered  her  a  home,  although  she  did  not  sympathise 
in  his  enthusiasm  for  the  Eoman  doctrine  and  ritual.  He 
had  taken  his  bachelor's  degree  at  Cambridge,  but  never 
proceeded  further,  and  it  is  not  improbable  that  his  leaving 
the  university  may  have  been  due  to  the  same  influences 
which  led  so  many  at  this  time  to  give  up  their  hopes 
of  a  university  career  and  to  content  themselves  with 
the  obscurity  of  a  country  gentleman's  life.^° 

When  Gerard's  first  acquaintance  in  Norwich  parted 
from  him,  he  went  in  search  of  Mr.  Yelverton,  and, 
according  to  appointment,  met  him  in  the  nave  of  the 
cathedral."  In  the  course  of  the  interview  Gerard  frankly 
confessed  himself  a  priest  of  the  Society  of  Jesus,  and 
explained  his  desire  to  present  himself  before  his  superior 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  165 

in  London  with  the  least  possible  delay.  Mr.  Yelverton, 
instead  of  furthering  this  plan,  insisted  on  taking  him 
to  Grimston,  mounting  him  on  the  horse  which  his  servant 
had  been  riding,  and  leaving  the  man  to  follow  with 
Gerard's  pony.  From  Norwich  to  Grimston  was  too  long 
a  ride  for  one  day,  and  they  put  up  for  the  night  at  one 
of  the  country  houses  on  the  road,  possibly  Tuddenham, 
where  William  Walpole's  widow  was  now  living,  or  Elsing 
Hall,  the  seat  of  Mr.,  afterwards  Sir  Anthony,  Brown. ^^ 
Next  day  they  arrived  at  Mr.  Yelverton's,  and  Gerard 
was  introduced  as  a  friend  who  had  come  to  spend  some 
time  with  him.  Though  the  secret  of  his  priesthood  was 
kept  with  the  utmost  jealousy,  Gerard  never  concealed 
the  fact  of  his  being  a  Catholic ;  he  was  in  about  as 
safe  a  neighbourhood  as  there  was  in  England  south  of 
the  Humber ;  the  squires  in  this  part  of  Norfolk  had  by 
no  means  moved  with  the  times,  they  were  Catholics 
almost  to  a  man.  People  discussed  the  great  questions 
between  the  Churches  of  England  and  Eome  freely  and 
openly,  and  scarcely  a  single  one  of  the  old  county  families 
was  without  some  prominent  members  who  were  already 
or  were  soon  about  to  be  sufferers  for  their  faith.  The 
Townshends  of  Kainham,  the  Cobbs  of  Sandringham,  the 
Bastards  of  Dunham,  the  Bozouns  of  Whissonsett,  the 
Kerviles  of  Wiggenhall,  and  many  others  of  less  note 
and  importance,  all  figure  in  the  Eecusant  Eolls,  and  all 
were  within  a  ten-miles  ride  of  Grimston ;  the  county 
swarmed  with  squires  who,  though  they  "kept  their 
church,"  yet  had  small  love  for  the  new  order  of  things, 
and  would  have  welcomed  a  change  to  the  old  regime 
with  something  more  than  equanimity.^3 

When  Gerard  dropped  down  into  the  midst  of  this 
neighbourhood  of  malcontent  gentlemen,  who  were  quite 
inclined  to  attribute  all  the  inconveniences  they  might 
experience  from  the  natural  course  of  events  or  their  own 
extravagance  to  the  effects  of  the  persecution,  which  they 
were  not  likely  to  under-estimate,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
his  success  as  a  proselytiser  surpassed  his  most  sanguine 


i66  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

expectations.  He  tells  us  that  his  new  friend  carried  him 
about  with  him  "  to  nearly  every  gentleman's  house  in  the 
country,"  Yelverton  having  the  sagacity  to  see  that 
Gerard  was  no  ordinary  man,  and  that  he  could  take  care 
of  himself  with  tact  and  discretion.  Doubtless  among  the 
inner  circle  of  the  faithful  it  was  soon  suspected  that  this 
Mr.  Thompson — for  this  was  the  name  he  went  by — must 
needs  be  something  else  than  he  professed  to  be.  How  if 
this  captivating  young  gentleman  with  the  courtly  manners 
and  charming  address  were — might  they  whisper  it? — a 
priest,  or  something  worse  ?  To  be  sure  he  could  hold  his 
own  with  the  squire  in  the  hunting  field,  or  slip  a  hawk  from 
his  wrist  with  the  best  of  them ;  take  a  hand  at  the  card 
table,  or  enjoy  a  seemly  joke  with  a  frolic  glee  that  made 
him  welcome  wherever  he  came ;  but  what  did  that  flash  of 
the  dark  eyes  mean  when  the  ribald  tongue  broke  out  into 
blasphemy  and  filthy  language  ?  ^-^  At  times  how  grave 
he  was  and  silent;  with  all  this  gaiety  and  vivacity,  his 
mind  was  clearly  always  running  upon  serious  things. 
Other  men  talked  on  matters  of  controversy  as  if  such 
themes  were  outside  of  themselves,  he  spoke  with  a  solemn 
earnestness  that  impressed  his  hearers  most  profoundly. 

Nor  was  this  all :  in  accounting,  or  attempting  to  account, 
for  the  effect  which  a  man  produces  upon  others,  we  mistake 
the  matter  much  if  we  allow  ourselves  to  believe  that  the 
proselytiser's  success  is  even  mainly  due  to  his  skilful  use 
of  cunningly  constructed  syllogisms  and  all  the  tricks  of 
logic.  Converts  are  not  made  by  arguments,  and  none 
knew  this  better  than  the  Jesuits  themselves.  Conviction 
is  the  result  of  a  very  complex  process,  and  he  who  leaves 
out  of  account  the  personal  element  from  his  calculations 
will  never  be  able  to  understand  the  secret  of  many  a 
strong  man's  failure  or  weak  man's  triumphs.  In  these 
matters  it  has  again  and  again  been  proved  that  the  main 
factor  must  always  be  that  subtle  and  indefinable  something 
which  can  only  be  classed  under  the  head  of  personal 
influence,  and  which  some,  in  their  despair  of  explaining 
its  potency,   have  designated  as  "mesmeric  force."     It  is 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  167 


abundantly  clear  that  Gerard  possessed  this  strange  power 
of  attraction  and  persuasion  to  a  marvellous  extent. 
During  the  few  years  of  his  sojourn  in  Norfolk  and  Suffolk 
the  number  of  converts  of  both  sexes  which  he  made  would 
appear  absolutely  incredible,  if  the  evidence  were  not  so 
conclusive,  and  the  proofs  had  not  come  to  us  from  so  many 
different  quarters.  At  least  ten  young  men  of  birth,  and 
belonging  to  the  most  considerable  families  in  the  two 
counties,  left  England  and  joined  the  Society  of  Jesus 
before  the  close  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  and  in  every  instance 
we  can  distinctly  trace  his  influence ;  and,  indeed,  in  the 
majority  of  cases  they  themselves  attribute  their  conversion 
to  Gerard  by  name.  He  has  indeed  so  much  understated 
the  importance  of  his  own  work  that  it  looks  as  if  he  had 
scarcely  been  aware  how  great  was  the  effect  of  his  labours ; 
and  it  is  only  very  recently,  after  the  lapse  of  three  centuries, 
that  modern  research  has  enabled  us  to  form  a  truer 
estimate  of  the  extent  of  his  influence. 

Among  the  first  who  found  their  way  to  Grimston  was 
Edward  Walpole,  drawn  back  to  Houghton  by  his  father's 
death,  to  look  after  his  affairs.  Between  him  and  Edward 
Yelverton  there  had  long  been  a  perfect  understanding,  and 
Yelverton  was  not  likely  to  keep  the  great  secret  from  one 
who  was  so  sure  not  to  betray  it.  Ever  since  Henry 
Walpole  had  fled  the  country  he  had  kept  up  a  correspond- 
ence with  his  relatives  at  home,  and  letters  had  passed  by 
every  available  opportunity.  Of  course  he  had  been  careful 
not  to  let  his  cousin's  enthusiasm  cool,  and  the  blundering 
policy  of  the  Government,  which  attempted  to  crush  out  all 
fanaticism,  whether  in  the  Romanist  or  the  Sectary,  as 
heinous  crime,  and  which  yet  did  not  allow  the  criminal 
the  resource  of  running  away  from  his  persecutor,  had  in 
the  meantime  continued  as  vexatious  as  ever.  The  rigour 
had  not  abated,  and  the  irritation  had  intensified. 

So  far  Edward  Walpole  had  been  only  a  Non-conformist ; 
at  worst  he  had  absented  himself  from  church,  and  thereby 
rendered  himself,  liable  to  the  fine  for  recusancy,  but  he  had 
not  been  formally  "  reconciled  "    to  the  Church  of  Rome. 


i68  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

When  he  heard  of  Gerard  he  soon  presented  himself  at 
Grimston,  which  was  only  five  miles  from  Houghton,  and 
with  little  delay  embraced  the  opportunity  of  giving  in  his 
adhesion  to  the  Jesuit  emissary. 

At  Anmer  Hall,  too,  Henry  Walpole's  youngest  brother, 
Michael,  was  now  living,  with  no  very  definite  plans  for 
his  future  career, — restless,  discontented,  and  ready  for  any 
venture, — of  ardent  and  enthusiastic  temperament, — just  at 
that  age  and  just  in  that  mood  in  which  a  youth  is  readiest 
to  surrender  himself  to  the  sway  and  direction  of  a  powerful 
mind.  There  was  no  need  for  any  conversion  in  his  case. 
Had  not  his  brother,  that  hero  of  the  house,  stood  by 
Campion's  side  at  the  gallows  ?  had  he  not  had  already  to 
hide  from  the  pursuivants,  to  run  for  his  life  ?  and  was  he 
not  now  an  exile  for  the  faith  which  the  mob  were  howling 
at?  Was  not  that  same  brother  himself  a  Jesuit  Father, 
from  whom  over  the  sea  came  letters  of  earnest  pleading, , 
and  the  fervent  words  which  told  of  inward  peace  and  a 
trust  that  knew  no  doubt  nor  any  thought  of  wavering? 
And  lo !  here,  on  the  other  side  of  Grimston  heath,  in  the 
house  of  his  brother's  friend,  it  was  whispered  that  a  Jesuit 
priest  was  staying  as  a  guest.  He  had  come  none  knew 
whence,  and  they  scarce  knew  how — the  witchery  of  a 
certain  mystery  and  romance  was  round  him.  Perhaps 
he  might  prove  a  second  Campion  ;  perhaps  he  too  was 
ambitious  of  the  martyr's  crown.  Certainly  he  was  living 
every  hour  of  the  day  holding  his  life  in  his  hand,  and  sure, 
if  detected,  of  being  dragged  away  to  horrible  torture  and 
death.  And  yet  he  went  in  and  out  as  gay  and  fearless 
as  the  country  squires  with  whom  he  mixed  familiarly  on 
terms  of  equality,  and  as  much  at  his  ease  as  if  there  were 
no  penal  law  upon  the  statute  book.  It  is  easy  to  see  for  a 
young  man  of  chivalrous  nature,  with  the  love  of  adventure 
strong  in  him,  all  this  must  have  exercised  an  overpowering 
fascination.  And  accordingly  we  find  that  young  Michael 
threw  himself  into  Gerard's  arms  and  attached  himself  to 
him  with  entire  devotion.  From  the  first  he  became  his 
crusty  companion  and  constant  attendant,  shared  his  perils 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  169 


acted  as  his  messenger,  served  him  as  his  esquire  in  his 
journeys,  clung  to  his  side  wherever  he  went,  and  proved  a 
most  valuable  coadjutor  and  friend. ^s 

There  were  two  other  brothers  of  the  Anmer  family  who, 
as  time  went  on,  became  subject  to  the  Gerard  influence. 
Geoffrey  Walpole,  the  second  son,  never  seems  to  have  been 
troubled  by  any  scruples  of  conscience.  There  is  not  the 
slightest  evidence  that  he  had  any  sympathy  with  the 
uneasiness  and  discontent  which  troubled  the  minds  of 
other  members  of  the  household.  Whether  he  was  more 
phlegmatic  or  less  romantic,  more  stable  or  less  earnest,  we 
shall  never  know  :  it  is,  however,  certain  that  he  was  the 
only  one  of  the  six  sons  who  never  suffered  for  his  religious 
opinions. 

Just  a  year  before  the  arrival  of  Gerard  in  Norfolk, 
Christopher,  the  fourth  son,  had  entered  at  Gains  College, 
Cambridge.  He  was  then  nineteen,  and  therefore  several 
years  older  than  the  usual  age  at  which  at  this  time 
freslimen  went  up  to  the  university.  He  had  passed  the 
previous  two  years  under  a  scholar  of  some  eminence, 
Thomas  Speght,  master  of  Ely  school,  and  one  of  the 
earliest  editors  of  Chaucer.  Speght  was  a  Peterhouse  man, 
and  had  been  there  under  Dr.  Perne,  and  was  probably, 
like  him,  a  latitudinarian,  with  more  taste  for  literature  than 
theology. ^^  It  is  probable  that  young  Christopher  Walpole 
had  not  been  originally  intended  for  one  of  the  learned 
professions,  and  that  it  had  been  decided  to  send  him  to 
Cambridge  only  after  his  brother  Eichard  had  relinquished 
his  hopes  of  a  university  career ;  but  we  are  assured  that 
he  made  the  best  use  of  his  time,  and  that  he  was  a 
diligent  student.  When  he  came  home  to  Anmer  for  the 
long  vacation  of  1589,  he  must  have  made  Gerard's 
acquaintance  for  the  first  time,  and  he  was  the  next  to 
succumb  to  the  fascination  of  the  young  Jesuit  priest.  He 
never  returned  to '  Cambridge.  More  than  half  disposed  to 
throw  in  his  lot  with  his  two  exiled  brothers,  he  was  ready 
enough  to  yield  to  Father  Gerard's  persuasive  powers.  His 
position  at  the  university  was  henceforth  no  longer  tenable. 


I70  ONE   GENERATION  OF 


He  could  not  rest  where  he  was.  Oaths  and  declarations, 
sermons  in  the  university  pulpit,  which  he  was  bound  to 
listen  to,  attendance  at  the  college  chapel,  and  compulsory 
communion  with  heretics, — all  these  things  were  threatening 
him.  He  could  not  conscientiously  face  them,  and  the  time 
had  come  when  he  believed  that  he  must  needs  make  his 
choice — remain  in  England  and  conform,  or  leave  it,  and 
enjoy  that  liberty  of  conscience  which  was  not  possible  at 
home. 

There  was  still  one  other  brother,  Thomas  Walpole,  a 
young  man  of  twenty-two,  who  without  any  occupation, 
and  apparently  without  any  taste  for  learning  and  study, 
was  at  this  time  idling  at  home.  He  too,  it  seems,  could 
not  make  up  his  mind  to  conform,  and  be  content  with 
things  as  they  were.  But  what  could  he  do?  These 
Walpoles  clung  together  with  a  stubborn  pride  of  family 
that  disdained  to  purchase  advancement  by  bowing  in  the 
house  of  Eimmon ;  and  when  his  brothers  were  already  so 
deeply  compromised,  Thomas  Walpole  would  not  be  disloyal 
to  his  kin.  As  for  the  polemical  questions  in  dispute,  he 
would  leave  them  to  others  to  wrangle  about,  but  his 
brothers'  cause  should  be  his  cause,  and  with  them  he 
would  stand  or  fall. 

And  thus  round  the  hearth  at  Anmer,  five  miles  or  so 
from  Father  Gerard's  retreat,  five  young  men,  the  eldest  of 
them  six-and-twenty  years  of  age,  might  be  seen  sitting 
moodily  in  that  winter  of  1589,  with  no  future  before  them, 
and  no  career  open,  living  under  a  ban.  At  any  moment 
some  emissary  from  the  Government  might  knock  rudely 
at  the  door,  some  pursuivant  might  come  to  call  them  to 
account  and  press  the  oath  upon  them,  some  spy  might 
report  that  they  no  longer  put  in  an  appearance  at  that 
parish  church  which  was  almost  contiguous  to  their  hall ; 
every  message  from  the  outer  world  was  full  of  threatening, 
there  was  no  field  for  their  ambition,  no  outlet  for  their 
enthusiasm,  no  scope  for  the  exercise  of  such  powers  as 
they  were  conscious  of  possessing.  Of  course  they  became 
fanatics ;  of  course  they  became  more  and  more  possessed 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  171 

by  one  idea;  of  course  the  sense  of  wrong  and  injustice 
mastered  their  reason  and  judgment ;  the  rites  of  a  religion 
which  was  proscribed  seemed  to  them  to  be  the  only  things 
that  were  worth  living  for,  and  became  in  their  eyes  all  the 
dearer  and  more  precious  because  every  time  that  they  took 
part  in  them  they  were  running  a  tremendous  risk,  and 
braving  the  terrors  of  the  persecuting  laws. 

In  the  midst  of  this  condition  of  affairs,  news  came  from 
across  the  sea  which  burst  upon  the  brothers  with  fresh 
dismay — Henry  Walpole  had  been  arrested  at  Flushing,  and 
was  now  lying  in  a  dungeon  in  imminent  peril  of  his  life. 
His  captors  demanded  a  ransom.  Who  would  come  to  his 
side  and  bring  the  deliverance  ? 


NOTES   ON   CHAPTER  VI 

1.  Page  158.  The  main  authority  for  all  statements  regarding 
Father  John  Gerard  and  his  family  is  Mr.  Morris's  Condition  of  Catholics 
under  James  I.,  with  its  able  life  of  Gerard,  derived  chiefly  from  his  own 
autobiography,  and  illustrated  by  very  copious  extracts  from  MSS.  in  the 
Kecord  Office  and  elsewhere.  Gerard  was  imprisoned  in  the  Marshalsea 
"from  the  beginning  of  one  Lent"  (1584)  to  the  end  of  the  following 
(1585). 

2.  Page  159.  On  the  new  religious  Orders  founded  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  see  Eanke's  History  of  the  Popes,  Book  ii.  sect.  4. 

3.  Page  160.  Morris,  p.  11.  There  are  several  descriptions  of  Gerard's 
person,  dress,  &g.  The  following  has  been  given  by  Mr.  Morris, 
but  it  will  bear  reprinting  here,  affording,  as  it  does,  so  good  an  instance 
of  the  wretch  Topcliffe's  peculiar  style  of  composition  and  more  peculiar 
spelling. 

• '  Jhon  Gerrarde,  y«  Jhezew^  is  about  30  years  oulde  Of  a  good  stature 
sumwhat  highc  then  S""  Tho  Layton  &  upright  in  his  paysse  and 
countenance  sum  what  stayring  in  his  look  or  Eyes  Currilde  heire  by 
Nature  &  blakyshe  &  not  apt  to  have  much  heire  of  his  bearde.  I 
thincke  his  noase  sum  what  wide  and  turninge  Upp  Blubarde  Lipps 
turninge  outwards  Especially  the  over  Lipps  most  Uppwards  toword  the 
Noase  Kewryoos  in  speetche  If  he  do  now  contynewe  his  custome.  And 
in  his  speetche  he  flourrethe  and  smyles  much  &  a  falteringe  or  Lispinge, 
or  dooblinge  of  his  Tonge  in  his  speeche." 

Another  description  of  him  from  the  MSS.  at  Hatfield  will  be  found  in 
the  Appendix. 

4.  Page  161.  Horrible  as  the  details  are,  Gerard's  account  of  his 
torture  in  the  Tower  is  so  vivid  and  so  powerful  that  I  cannot  refrain 
from  giving  it  here  in  his  own  words. 

"  Then  we  proceeded  to  the  place  appointed  for  the  torture.  We  went 
in  a  sort  of  solemn  procession  :  the  attendants  preceding  us  with 
lighted  candles,  because  the  place  was  underground  and  very  dark, 
especially  about  the  entrance.  It  was  a  place  of  immense  extent,  and  in 
it  were  ranged  divers  sorts  of  racks  and  other  instruments  of  torture. 
Some  of  these  they  displayed  before  me,  and  told  me  that  I  should  have 
to  taste  them  every  one.  Then  again  they  asked  me  if  I  was  willing  to 
satisfy  them  on  the  points  on  which  they  had  questioned  me.  '  It  is  out 
of  my  power  to  satisfy  you,'  I  answered;  and  throwing  myself  on  my 
knees,  I  said  a  prayer  or  two. 

"  Then  they  led  me  to  a  great  upright  beam  or  pillar  of  wood,  which 
was  one  of  the  supports  of  this  vast  crypt.    At  the  summit  of  this  column 

172 


ONE   GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE     173 

were  fixed  certain  iron  staples  for  supporting  weights.  Here  they  placed 
on  my  wrists  manacles  of  iron,  and  ordered  me  to  mount  upon  two  or  three 
wicker  steps  ;  then  raising  my  arms,  they  inserted  an  iron  bar  through 
the  rings  of  the  manacles,  and  then  through  the  staples  in  the  pillar, 
putting  a  pin  through  the  bar  so  that  it  could  not  slip.  My  arms  being 
thus  fixed  above  my  head,  they  withdrew  those  wicker  steps  I  spoke  of, 
one  by  one,  from  beneath  my  feet,  so  that  I  hung  by  my  hands  and 
arms.  The  tips  of  my  toes,  however,  still  touched  the  ground  ;  so  they 
dug  away  the  ground  beneath,  as  they  could  not  raise  me  higher,  for 
they  had   suspended  me  from  the  topmost  staples  in  the  pillar. 

"  Thus  hanging  by  my  wrists,  I  began  to  pray,  while  those  gentlemen 
standing  round  asked  me  again  if  I  was  willing  to  confess.  I  replied,  '  I 
neither  can  nor  will.'  But  so  terrible  a  pain  began  to  oppress  me,  that 
I  was  scarce  able  to  speak  the  words.  The  worst  pain  was  in  my  breast 
and  belly,  my  arms  and  hands.  It  seemed  to  me  that  all  the  blood  in 
my  body  rushed  up  my  arms  into  my  hands ;  and  I  was  under  the 
impression  at  the  time  that  the  blood  actually  burst  forth  from  my 
fingers  and  at  the  back  of  my  hands.  This  was,  however,  a  mistake  ; 
the  sensation  was  caused  by  the  swelling  of  the  flesh  over  the  iron  that 
bound  it. 

'  •  I  felt  now  such  intense  pain  (and  the  effect  was  probably  heightened 
by  an  inferior  temptation),  that  it  seemed  to  me  impossible  to  continue 
enduring  it.  It  did  not,  however,  go  so  far  as  to  make  me  feel  any 
inclination  or  real  disposition  to  give  the  information  they  wanted. 
For  as  the  eyes  of  our  merciful  Lord  had  seen  my  imperfection.  He  did 
*  not  suffer  me  to  be  tempted  above  what  I  was  able,  but  with  the 
temptation  made  also  a  way  of  escape.'  Seeing  me  therefore  in  this 
agony  of  pain  and  this  interior  distress, 'His  infinite  mercy  sent  me  this 
thought :  '  The  very  furthest  and  utmost  they  can  do  is  to  take  away  thy 
life ;  and  often  hast  thou  desired  to  give  thy  life  for  God ;  thou  art  in 
God's  hands,  Who  knoweth  well  what  thou  sufferest,  and  is  all-powerful 
to  sustain  thee.'  With  this  thought  our  good  God  gave  me  also  out  of 
His  immense  bounty  the  grace  to  resign  myself,  and  offer  myself  utterly 
to  His  good  pleasure,  together  with  some  hope  and  desire  of  dying  for 
His  sake.  From  that  moment  I  felt  no  more  trouble  in  my  soul, 
and  even  the  bodily  pain  seemed  to  be  more  bearable  than  before, 
although  I  doubt  not  that  it  really  increased,  from  the  continued  strain 
that  was  exercised  on  every  part  of  my  body. 

"  Hereupon  the  gentlemen,  seeing  that  I  gave  them  no  further  answer, 
departed  to  the  Lieutenant's  house  ;  and  there  they  waited,  sending  now 
and  then  to  know  how  things  were  going  on  in  the  crypt.  There  were 
left  with  me  three  or  four  strong  men  to  superintend  my  torture.  My 
gaoler  also  remained,  I  fully  believe  out  of  kindness  to  me,  and  kept 
wiping  away  with  a  handkerchief  the  sweat  that  ran  down  from  my 
face  the  whole  time,  as  indeed  it  did  from  my  whole  body.  So  far, 
indeed,  he  did  me  a  service ;  but  by  his  words  he  rather  added  to  my 


J 74  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

distress,  for  he  never  stopped  beseeching  and  entreating  me  to  have  pity 
on  myself,  and  tell  these  gentlemen  what  they  wanted  to  know ;  and 
so  many  human  reasons  did  he  allege  that  I  verily  believe  he  was  either 
instigated  directly  by  the  devil  under  pretence  of  affection  for  me,  or 
had  been  left  there  purposely  by  the  persecutors  to  influence  me  by 
his  show  of  sympathy.  In  any  case,  these  shafts  of  the  enemy 
seemed  to  be  spent  before  they  reached  me,  for  though  annoying, 
they  did  me  no  real  hurt,  nor  did  they  seem  to  touch  my  soul,  or 
move  it  in  the  least.  I  said,  therefore,  to  him,  '  I  pray  you  to  say 
no  more  on  that  point,  for  I  am  not  minded  to  lose  my  soul  for  the 
sake  of  my  body,  and  you  pain  me  by  what  you  say.'  Yet  I  could 
not  prevail  with  him  to  be  silent.  The  others  also  who  stood  by 
said :  '  He  will  be  a  cripple  all  his  life,  if  he  lives  through  it,  but  he 
will  have  to  be  tortured  daily  till  he  confesses.'  But  I  kept  praying 
in  a  low  voice,  and  continually  uttered  the  holy  names  of  Jesus  and 
Mary. 

"  I  had  hung  in  this  way  till  after  one  of  the  clock,  as  I  think,  when  I 
fainted.  How  long  I  was  in  the  faint  I  know  not ;  perhaps  not  long  ; 
for  the  men  who  stood  by  lifted  me  up,  or  replaced  those  wicker  steps 
under  my  feet,  until  I  came  to  myself ;  and  immediately  they  heard  me 
praying,  they  let  me  down  again.  This  they  did  over  and  over  again 
when  the  faint  came  on,  eight  or  nine  times  before  five  of  the  clock. 
Somewhat  before  five  came  Wade  again,  and  drawing  near  said,  *  Will 
you  yet  obey  the  commands  of  the  Queen  and  the  Council  ?  ' 

•• '  No,'  said  I,  '  what  you  ask  is  unlawful,  therefore  I  will  never  do  it.' 

"  *  At  least,  then,'  said  Wade,  *  say  that  you  would  like  to  speak  to 
Secretary  Cecil.' 

'•  '  I  have  nothing  to  say  to  him,'  I  replied,  *  more  than  I  have  said 
already;  and  if  I  were  to  ask  to  speak  to  him,  scandal  would  be  caused, 
for  people  would  imagine  that  I  was  yielding  at  length,  and  wished  to 
give  information.' 

"  Upon  this  Wade  suddenly  turned  his  back  in  a  rage,  and  departed, 
saying  in  a  loud  and  angry  tone,  '  Hang  there,  then,  till  you  rot ! ' 

"  So  he  went  away,  and  I  think  all  the  Commissioners  then  left  the 
Tower  !  for  at  five  of  the  clock  the  great  bell  of  the  Tower  sounds,  as  a 
signal  for  all  to  leave  who  do  not  wish  to  be  locked  in  all  night.  Soon 
after  this  they  took  me  down  from  my  cross,  and  though  neither  foot 
nor  leg  was  injured,  yet  I  could  hardly  stand." 

5.  Fage  162.  Any  reader  of  Gerard's  narrative,  with  some  local  know- 
ledge, will  be  able  to  follow  him  in  his  route  to  Norwich  by  the  help  of 
my  account  in  the  text.  Bacton  is  the  farthest  northern  point  at  which 
the  landing  could  have  taken  place.  Had  the  vessel  put  him  ashore 
at  Mundesley,  Sheringham,  or  Cromer,  he  would  have  almost  neces- 
sarily had  to  pass  through  North  Walsham,  or  Aylsham,  where  he  would 
have  been  at  once  brought  before  a  magistrate.     On  the  other  hand,  had 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  I75 


he  landed  at  Bacton  itself,  he  could  scarcely  have  failed  to  mention 
Bromholm  Priory,  which  was  then  not  quite  in  ruins.  It  is  clear  that 
the  place  of  landing  must  have  been  between  Happisburgh  and  Bacton, 
and  that  Father  Oldcorne,  "  keeping  to  the  coast,"  must  have  fallen  in 
with  the  sailors  at  or  near  Mundesley.  The  bridge  over  the  river  at 
Hellesdon  existed  certainly  as  early  as  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
and  the  fields  outside  Norwich  at  this  time  were  all  open.  In  the 
broken  folio  MS.  in  the  Archives  of  the  Corporation  of  Norwich,  about 
the  middle  of  the  volume,  there  is  a  precept  issued  apparently  in 
9  Hen.  V.,  ordering  the  repair  of  the  bridge  between  Hellesdon  and 
Earlham.  Gerard  seems  to  have  crossed  the  Dereham  road,  and  to 
have  "made  his  circuit  of  the  city,"  till  he  found  himself  on  one  of  the 
main  London  roads,  and,  avoiding  the  long  street  from  St.  Stephen's 
gates,  which  would  have  exposed  him  to  observation,  to  have  crossed 
what  was  then  the  common  land  outside  the  walls,  and  entered  by  the 
"  Brazen  Doors." 

Not  many  days  before  Gerard's  arrival  in  Norfolk  an  order  had  been 
sent  down  to  the  Sheriff  of  Norfolk  (Sir  John  Peyton  of  Isleham,  co. 
Cambridge)  *'.  .  .  for  that  their  L.L.  understand  that  the  Recusants 
that  are  prisoners  in  the  Common  Jail  within  that  county,  do  much 
harm,  and  infect  the  county,  by  the  liberty  which  they  enjoy  there,  their 
L.L.  have  thought  good  to  have  such  of  them  whose  names  are  con- 
tained in  the  enclosed  Schedule  to  be  removed  from  thence  to  Wisbech, 
and  therefore  did  will  and  require  him  to  cause  them  to  be  immediately 
delivered  to  the  charge  of  this  bearer  [  ]  George,  keeper  of  the 

same  house,  and  also  to  be  assisting  unto  him  in  the  safe  conveyance  of 
them  thereto." — Privy  Council  Records. 

Then  follow  the  names  :— 1.  Walter  Norton.  2.  George  (a  mistake 
for  Robert)  Downes.  3.  Robert  Lovell.  4.  Ferdinand  Paris.  5. 
Humphrey  Bedingfeld.     6.  Robert  Graye. 

It  appears  that  a  complaint  had  been  sent  up  to  the  Council  in  August 
against  James  Bradshaw,  keeper  of  the  Castle  at  Norwich,  *'  being  com- 
plained of  to  have  given  more  liberty  to  such  [as]  are  obstinate 
Recusants  than  is  fit,"  and  in  consequence  a  letter  was  sent  down  to 
Freake,  Bishop  of  Norwich,  ordering  him  "to  inform  himself  of  the 
behaviour  of  James  Bradshaw  .  .  .  and  of  his  disposition  in  religion, 
and  how  he  hath  kept  the  same  Recusants,  and  what  liberty  they  have 
had,"  &c. 

Of  the  gentlemen  named,  Ferdinand  Paris  was  of  Pudding  Norton, 
CO.  Norfolk  ;  he  had  large  estates  also  in  Cambridgeshire,  but  he  seems 
to  have  been  at  last  ruined  by  the  exactions  levied  upon  him  and  his 
family. 

Robert  Lovell  was  a  younger  brother  of  Sir  Thomas  Lovell  of 
Harling. 

Humphrey  Bedingfeld  of  Quidenham  was  a  younger  brother  of  Sir 
ITexry  Bedingfeld  of  Oxburgh.     In  another  order  in  the  Privy  Council 


176  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

Book,  dated  20th  March,  1588-9,  the  Sheriff  of  the  County  is  instructed 
that,  "Whereas  Humphrey  Bedingfeld,  Gent.,  hath  been  long  time  a 
prisoner  for  recusancy  in  Norwich  Jail ;  forasmuch  as  there  is  good 
[hope]  of  his  conformity  in  religion  if  he  might  have  conference  with 
some  such  as  are  given  \pic\  therein  and  for  his  health's  sake.  He  was 
required  to  take  order  that  BEmNOFELD  might  be  delivered  to  the  custody 
of  Mb.  Eowe,  parson  of  Quidenham,  to  remain  with  him  in  his  charge 
for  the  purpose  aforesaid  until  he  shall  have  order  for  the  contrary. 
Causing  good  bonds  to  be  taken  of  Bedingfeld  that  during  the  time 
of  his  commitment  as  aforesaid,  he  depart  not  above  two  miles  distant 
from  the  house  or  dwelling-place  of  the  said  Kowe." 

On  Robert  Downes,  see  notes  10  and  11  to  Chapter  III.  :  he  was  an 
uncle  of  Francis  Downes  of  Lavenham,  who  was  ancestor  of  Lord 
DowNES,  in  the  Peerage  of  Ireland. 

Robert  Grate,  of  Merton,  had  married  a  sister  of  Mr.  Lovell's.  His 
epitaph  in  Merton  church  is  given  in  Blomefield,  ii.  305.  He  was 
ancestor  of  the  present  Lord  Walsingham. 

The  order  for  the  removal  of  these  gentlemen  to  Wisbech  was  not 
carried  out  till  April  1590.  A  month  before,  a  letter  had  been  ordered 
to  be  written  to  "  Richard  Archenstall,  Esq.,  with  a  copy  of  the  orders 
sent  down  by  their  L.L.  for  the  keeping  of  the  Recusants." 

•'  1.  First  the  knights  and  principal  gents  are  to  be  allowed  two  men 
apiece  for  their  necessary  service,  if  they  require  it,  and  the  others  but 
one  man  apiece. 

"2.  It  is  meet  that  they  shall  be  placed  in  the  Bishop's  Palace  in  Ely, 
in  such  rooms  as  by  him  to  whom  the  charge  is  committed  shall  be 
thought  most  meet  and  convenient  for  that  purpose. 

"  3.  They  are  to  be  used  with  all  courtesy,  but  not  to  suffer  them  to 
have  conference  with  any  stranger  but  in  his  own  presence,  or  some 
such  trusty  person  as  he  shall  dispute. 

"  4.  For  their  bedding,  hangings,  and  such  like  furniture,  the  parties 
themselves  to  furnish  the  same,  to  whom  the  keeper  shall  give  notice 
thereof  to  the  end  they  make  provision  accordingly. 

"5.  He  shall  make  them  acquainted  with  the  diet  that  is  set  down  in 
the  Fleet,  whereof  a  note  is  set  down  herewithal,  both  for  the  allowance 
and  the  number  of  the  dishes,  and  if  they  shall  desire  any  increase,  then 
are  they  to  compound  with  him  for  the  same. 

"6,  It  is  meant  that  they  shall  be  permitted  to  converse  together  at 
their  meals  and  at  such  other  times  as  by  him  to  whom  the  charge 
of  them  is  committed  shall  be  thought  meet,  so  as  they  do  forbear 
formal  speeches  unfit  for  good  subjects  against  the  Queen's  Majesty  or 
any  States  of  the  Realm  having  governance  thereto.  (?) 

"7.  So  likewise  they  are  to  be  permitted  to  walk  together  at  such 
times  as  by  their  keeper's  discretion  shall  be  thought  meet,  in  such 
places  as  are  not  open  to  the  town  of  Ely. 

*'  8.  Order  may  be  taken  that  some  of  the  watchmen  of  the  town  of 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  I77 

Ely  be  appointed  to  watch  about  the  house,  in  such  places  as  by  the 
keepers  shall  be  thought  most  meet  and  needful,  and  so  it  is  to  be 
referred  to  his  own  discretion  to  consider  what  number  of  men  he  shall 
think  sufificient  to  keep  both  for  their  better  safeguard  and  surface. 

*'  9.  Every  night  they  are  to  be  shut  up  in  their  chamber  at  a  con- 
venient hour. 

"  Orders  to  the  same  effect  to  Mr.  Fynes  for  Kecusants  to  be  placed 
under  his  charge  at  Banbury  Castle  or  Broughton,  Mr.  Fynes  his  house, 
&c. ,  &c." 

Doubtless  the  same  orders  held  good  at  Wisbech. 

6.  Pagt  163.  In  these  same  Records  of  the  Privy  Council  I  found 
two  instances  of  "leave  of  absence"  being  granted  to  the  Recusant 
gentry  :— 

1.  "  7th  January  1587-88.  A  warrant  to  the  keeper  of  Norwich  Jail 
to  take  bonds  of  Walter  Norton,  Gent.,  remaining  prisoner  under  his 
custody,  with  two  sufficient  sureties  in  the  sum  of  £1000  to  Her 
Majesty's  use,  with  condition  to  return  himself  prisoner  at  the  end 
of  one  month  following  into  his  custody,  and  thereupon  to  set  him 
forthwith  at  liberty." 

2.  •*  19th  June  1589.  A  letter  to  Sir  Edward  Clere,  to  take  good 
bonds  of  George  Willoughby,  of  St.  Mary  Magdalen  in  Marshland, 
Esq.,  to  Her  Majesty's  use,  for  his  forthcoming  upon  notice  given  him 
at  his  house  in  Marshland,  and  for  his  good  demeanour  and  well- 
usage  of  himself  during  the  time  he  shall  be  employed  about  the 
repairing  of  the  sea  banks,  drains,  and  draining  of  marshes ;  there- 
upon to  give  order  for  his  liberty  and  releasement  from  the  custody 
of  Robert  Bozun,  Esq.,  to  whose  keeping  he  was  the  last  year  com- 
mitted for  recusancy,  that  he  might  remain  within  the  circuit  of  six- 
teen miles  about  his  said  house  in  Marshland." 

7.  "Page  163.  In  the  answers  given  by  one  of  his  grandchildren 
Charles  Yelverton,  to  the  usual  interrogatories  presented  to  him  on 
his  entering  the  English  College  at  Rome,  on  the  14th  December,  1601 
— copies  of  which  are  now  in  the  archives  of  the  Rolls  House — he  says 
that  his  grandfather  had  twenty  children.  Some  of  these  may  have 
died  young;  I  know  of  only  fifteen,  and  there  are  only  fifteen  figured 
upon  his  brass,  still  existing  in  Rougham  church  ;  these  are,  however, 
all  represented  as  men  and  women.  The  scheme  on  page  178  gives  them 
at  a  glance. 

8.  Fagc  164.  Thomas,  eldest  son  of  Hamon  Lestrange  of  Hun- 
stanton, Esq.,  died  in  the  eighteenth  year  of  his  age,  February  1st,  in 
the  23rd  year  of  Elizabeth  (1582),  without  any  issue  by  Grisell  his  wife, 
daughter  of  William  Yelverton  of  Rougham.— Blomefield,  x.  319. 

In  the  muniment  room  at  Hunstanton  (A.  60)  are  deposited  "Articles 

12 


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A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  I79 


of  agreement  made  the  19th  March,  in  the  25th  year  of  Elizabeth,  by  the 
arbitrament  and  good  mediation  of  Henry  Doyly,  Thomas  Farmor, 
Nathaniel  Bacon,  and  Charles  Cornwallis,  Esquires,  as  well  by  the  full 
and  mutual  consent  of  Sir  Koger  Woodhouse,  Knight,  for  and  on  behalf 
of  Philip  Woodhouse,  Esq.,  his  son  and  heir  apparent,  and  Grisell  his 
wife,  of  the  one  part  ;  and  John  Peyton,  Esq.,  for  and  on  behalf  of 
Nicholas  Lestrange,  Esq.,  on  the  other  part.  ..."  In  accordance  with 
which  arbitration  made  on  the  15th  August,  27  Elizabeth,  the  manors  of 
East  Lexham,  with  West  Lexham,  Dunham,  &c.,  were  made  over  to 
Grisell  Woodhouse  for  her  life  (A.  61). 

9.  Page  164.  The  brother  and  sister  present  no  difficulty.  The 
brother  was  almost  certainly  Charles  Yelverton,  who  had  been  a 
witness  to  William  Walpole's  will  at  Tuddenham  a  year  before,  and 
who  shortly  afterwards  obtained  some  office  at  Court,  though  what  that 
office  was  I  have  not  yet  discovered.  The  sister,  Jane  Lumner,  had 
been  left  very  scantily  provided  for  by  her  husband,  who  died  very  much 
in  debt,  as  appears  by  her  petition  to  the  Court  of  Chancery  in  1597, 
where  she  speaks  of  herself  as  "  being  very  well  descended,  and  having 
also  received  a  good  portion  in  marriage."  (See  Original  Papers  of  the 
Norfolk  and  Norwich  Archasological  Society,  vol.  viii.  pt.  iv.) 

She  continued  "  an  obstinate  Recusant,"  as  she  is  frequently  described 
to  be  upon  the  Lists  of  Presentments  made  to  the  Bishop  of  Norwich 
annually.  She  had  two  daughters,  who  sympathised  with  their  mother 
and  suffered  with  her.  I  find  her  name  always  included  in  the  Recusant 
Lists  down  to  1615.  During  the  twenty  years,  more  or  less,  when  her 
name  appears  on  the  rolls,  she  changed  her  residence  three  or  four 
times,  and  it  looks  as  if  she  had  become  poorer  and  poorer  under  the 
pressure  of  the  exactions  levied  upon  her.  The  licence  for  *'  Edward  [sic] 
Lumner  de  Mannington  "  to  marry  "  Jane  Yelvebton  de  Rougham  "  is 
dated  5th  July,  1569. 

10.  Page  164.  Edward  Yelverton  took  his  B.A.  degree  in  1579, 
being  then  of  Peterhouse,  Cambridge  (MS.  Records  in  the  Registry  of 
the  University).  During  his  undergraduate  days  his  future  brother-in- 
law,  Philip  Woodhouse,  Dudley  Fenner,  and  Christopher  Heydon, 
were  among  the  fellow  commoners,  and  Edward  Walpole,  Henry 
Walpole,  Bartley  (alias  Bernard)  Gardiner,  and  Philip  Paris,  pro- 
bably a  son  of  Ferdinando  Paris  of  Pudding  Norton,  were  among  the 
pensioners.     See,  too,  n.  (33),  chap.  ii. 

That  Edward  Yelverton  was  twice  married  is  asserted  in  the  Visita- 
tion of  Norfolk,  now  in  course  of  publication  by  the  Norfolk  and  Norwich 
Archaeological  Society,  p.  269.  Who  his  first  wife  was  I  have  been  unable 
to  discover.  His  second  wife  was  Nazareth,  daughter  of  Edmund 
Bedingfeld  of  Oxburgh.  She  is  frequently  described  in  the  Present- 
ments as  *'  An  obstinate  Recusant,^  ^ 


i8o  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


Blomefield  haa  confounded  Edward  Yelverton  with  his  son  Edward 
Yelverton,  M.D. 

The  Grimeston  and  Blackborough  estates  were  settled  by  indenture, 
dated  12th  Jan.,  10  EUzabeth,  upon  William  Yelverton  and  Jane  his 
wife  for  life,  and  after  their  death  on  Edward  Yelverton  their  eldest 
son,  in  fee  tail. — Chancery  Inq.  p.m.,  S.  P.  0.  The  p.m.  inquisition 
on  William  Yelverton  was  held  at  Walsingham,  4th  October,  30 
Elizabeth. 

11.  Fage  164.  Though  no  Eecusant  would  enter  a  church  where 
divine  service  could  be  carried  on,  the  nave$  of  our  cathedrals  were 
regarded  as  no  more  within  the  'precincts.  The  uses  to  which  the 
nave  of  St.  Paul's  was  put  may  be  seen  in  Dean  Milman's  work,  and 
elsewhere. 

12.  Page  165.  By  a  Subsidy  Roll  (P.  B.  0.)  for  the  35th  Eliz.  1593, 
m,  I  find  that  William  Walpole's  widow  was  still  unmarried,  and 
living  at  Tuddenham.  The  chapel  is  still  in  existence  at  Elsing  Hall. 
The  Brownes  of  Elsing  were  conscientious  Catholics,  but  appear  to 
have  taken  the  oath,  and  so  were  regarded  by  the  stricter  Komanists 
as  "  schismatics."  The  following  letter,  dated  Elsing,  29th  April,  1876, 
is  from  the  rector  of  that  parish,  and  deserves  to  be  placed  on  record 
here. 

*•  At  Elsing  Hall,  between  the  grand  hall  and  the  withdrawing-room, 
in  the  thick  of  the  wall,  is  a  well,  evidently  the  well  of  a  staircase  leading 
downwards.  The  curious  part  of  this  is  that  the  opening  was  in  the 
side  of  the  room  ;  it  was  therefore  no  cellar,  but  most  probably  a  place 
of  concealment.  The  plastered  wall  of  the  well  against  the  hall  was 
broken  into  during  the  repairs  some  twenty  years  ago,  and  then  I  saw  it." 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  was  one  of  the  many  instances  of  a 
place  of  concealment  specially  constructed  as  a  hiding  hole. 

13.  Page  165.  Far  the  ablest  sketch  which  has  yet  been  written  of 
the  condition  of  feeling  among  the  upper  classes  on  the  questions  at 
issue  between  England  and  the  Papacy  is  to  be  found  in  the  seventh 
chapter  of  Mr.  Simpson's  Life  of  Campion.  It  is  all  the  more  valuable 
and  suggestive  because  it  comes  from  one  who  was  himself  a  convert  to 
the  Church  of  Kome,  and  who,  in  seceding  from  the  Church  of  his 
baptism,  made  some  real  sacrifices. 

14.  Page  166.  "He  [Father  Southwell]  frequently  got  me  to  instruct 
him  in  the  technical  terms  of  sport,  and  used  to  complain  of  his  bad 
memory  for  such  things,  for  on  many  occasions  when  he  fell  in  with 
Protestant  gentlemen  he  found  it  necessary  to  speak  of  these  matters, 
which  are  the  sole  topics  of  their  conversation  save  when  they  talk 
obscenity,  or  break  out  into  blasphemies  and  abuse  of  the  Saints  or  the 
Catholic  Faith." — Morris,  u.s.  p.  xxiv. 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  i8i 

15.  Page  169.  [Edward  Walpole  of  Houghton]  "  persuaded  his 
cousin  Michael  Walpole  ...  to  accompany  him.  At  this  period  of 
my  story  [1589]  the  latter  was  my  assistant,  and  used  to  go  with  me  as 
my  confidential  servant,  to  the  houses  of  those  gentlemen  with  whom  it 
was  necessary  for  me  to  maintain  such  a  position."— Gerard's  Auto- 
biography. See,  too,  Morris's  Condition  of  Catholics,  p.  Ixv.  ;  and 
Oliver's  Collections,  s.v.  "  Michael  Walpole.^^ 

• 

16.  Page  169.  "  Christopherus  Walpole,  filius  Christopheri  Walpole, 
generosi,  ex  oppido  Anmyre  oriundus  in  comitatu  Norfolciee,  litteris 
grammaticis  institutus  in  Schola  communi  Eliensi  sub  mago  Speght, 
per  licenciam,  adolescens  annorum  19,  admissus  est  in  collegium  firum 
litterarum  gratia  pensionarius  minor  commeat'  scolar.  25  Octobris  1587, 
fidejuss.  et  pro  eo  magr.  Christoph.  Grimston,  art.  mag.  et  hujus  collegii 
socius." — Matriculation  Book,  Caius  College,  Cambridge. 

There  is  a  good  account  of  Speght  in  Cooper's  Athence  Cantahrig. 
Cooper,  in  his  account  of  Christopher  Walpole  (w.s.),  has  confounded 
him  with  his  brother  Richard. 


CHAPTER   VII 


THE     MISSIO    CASTRENSIS 


When  Robert  Earl  of  Leicester  set  sail  from  Harwich 
on  his  disastrous  expedition  to  the  Low  Countries,  landing 
at  Flushing  on  the  10th  December,  1585,  the  avowed 
object  of  his  going  was  to  wrest  the  United  Provinces 
from  the  grasp  of  the  Spaniards,  and  to  free  from  Spanish 
domination  the  much-enduring  and  much-struggling  people 
whose  heroic  determination  and  courage  had  long  attracted 
the  amazement  and  admiration  of  Europe.  But  the  Earl 
of  Leicester  had  over-estimated  his  own  powers :  his  royal 
mistress  knew  him  better  than  he  knew  himself ;  she  had 
her  own  misgivings  of  her  favourite,  and  had  taken  a  true 
measure  of  his  qualifications  for  the  mission  he  was  so 
eager  to  discharge.  What  was  he  that  he  should  aspire 
to  lead  armies,  and  play  the  sovereign  over  a  stubborn 
people  with  a  passion  for  freedom  and  a  hatred  of  foreign 
control?  When  the  Queen  yielded  to  the  earl's  importunity 
she  yielded  with  the  worst  possible  grace,  and  left  him 
to  support  the  honour  of  England  and  to  pay  the  ragged 
followers  from  his  own  very  limited  resources.^  At  war 
a  novice,  at  diplomacy  a  child,  Leicester  had  as  his 
antagonist  in  the  field  the  most  consummate  captain  of 
the  age  and  in  '  statecraft  the  astute  and  high-minded 
patriot,  John  of  Barneveldt.  His  failure  was  predicted 
from  the  first;  but  few  could  have  anticipated  the  dis- 
graceful rebuffs  he  received,  or  foreseen  the  contemptible 
incapacity  he  exhibited,  till  humiliation  after  humiliation 
discovered  his  utter  shallowness,  and  made  it  evident  that 
in  no  circumstances  could  that  handsome  fop,  the  darling 

l82 


ONE  GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE    183 

of  the  drawing-room,  have  proved  himself  worthy  to 
be  a  leader  of  armies.  Character,  principle,  and  mental 
force  %vere  needed,  not  mere  personal  grace,  prettiness, 
and  the  languishing  accomplishments  of  a  perfect  ladies' 
man. 

On  his  first  arrival,  Leicester  was  welcomed  with 
enthusiasm,  and  almost  immediately  elected  Governor- 
General  of  the  United  Provinces ;  but  his  popularity  was 
short-lived;  deficient  in  tact,  temper,  courtesy,  and  know- 
ledge of  men,  his  arrogance  became  every  day  more 
offensive,  and  his  lack  of  all  soldierly  qualities  more 
glaringly  manifest.  After  eight  months  of  absolute  inaction, 
he  made  the  abortive  attempt  to  intercept  a  convoy  at 
Zutphen ;  in  this  attempt  Sir  Philip  Sydney — Leicester's 
nephew — lost  his  life  while  recklessly  charging  the  enemy, 
a  mad  and  riotous  proceeding  such  as  could  only  have 
occurred  under  a  general  who  had  no  proper  control 
over  his  officers.^  In  four  months  more  Leicester  was 
back  again  in  England,  having  effected  nothing.  Nay ! 
not  quite  nothing.  He  had  won  the  fort  which  was 
a  formidable  menace  to  Zutphen ;  he  had  secured 
Deventer,  one  of  the  most  important  cities  of  the  United 
Provinces. 

Deventer  had  been  wavering  in  its  allegiance.  There 
was  a  very  powerful  Catholic  faction  there.  The  religious 
sympathies  of  its  leading  inhabitants  were  strongly  in 
favour  of  the  old  religion,  and  the  magistrates  were  almost 
to  a  man  not  only  deeply  discontented  with  the  English 
domination,  but  in  heart  tending  more  and  more  towards 
the  Spanish  side.  On  the  20th  October,  1587,  Sir  William 
Pelham,  **the  stout  marshal,"  as  Motley  calls  him,  made 
his  entry  into  the  city,  summoned  the  magistrates  into 
his  presence,  and  on  the  following  day  removed  them 
from  their  office,  demanded  the  keys  of  the  gates,  im- 
prisoned the  old  officials,  and  created  new  ones,  staunch 
Protestants  all  of  them.  Deventer  was  safe,  and  Zutphen's 
fate  sealed ;  for  though  the  fort  was  gone  the  town  still 
held  out  against  the  English  besiegers.     The  next  question 


1 84  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

to    settle    was,    who    should    be    the    new    governor    of 
Deventer  ? 

There  were  in  Leicester's  army  a  strange  assemblage 
of  soldiers  of  fortune — men  of  reckless  daring,  absolutely 
without  principle  ;  adventurers  who  were  free  lances, 
and  ready  to  serve  on  either  side  for  plunder  or  pay ; 
fellows  who  were  no  more  to  be  trusted  than  common 
blacklegs  or  banditti.  Such  a  creature  was  Rowland  Yorke. 
His  career  pointed  him  out  as  a  man  with  the  ferocious 
courage  of  a  wild  beast  when  his  blood  was  up,  but  who 
seems  to  have  had  no  single  virtue  except  an]  absence  of 
all  fear  of  God  or  man.  One  less  worthy  of  a  post  of 
confidence  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  pick  out  from 
the  whole  force  under  Leicester's  command ;  and  yet 
to  him  was  committed  the  duty  of  holding  the  fort  of 
Zutphen  against  the  Spaniard,  and  of  ensuring  the  capture 
of  the  beleaguered  town  which  that  fort  now  commanded. 
This  was  a  bad  enough  blunder,  but  a  worse  blunder 
followed. 

There  was  another  leading  captain  in  the  army, — Sir 
William  Stanley, — a  restless  and  ambitious  soldier,  son 
and  heir  of  a  stubborn  Eecusant  in  Cheshire  who  had 
long  rendered  himself  conspicuous  by  his  determined 
opposition  to  the  Protestant  cause  in  his  own  neighbour- 
hood, and  had  given  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon  in  the  north 
of  England  a  great  deal  of  trouble  by  his  factious  activity 
in  support  of  the  Romanists  and  his  vigilance  in  thwarting 
every  attempt  to  prejudice  the  cause  to  which  he  was 
attached.  Such  as  the  father  was  such  was  the  son. 
First,  and  above  all  things,  a  religious  zealot,  whose 
passionate  hatred  of  everything  in  the  shape  of  Protestant- 
ism, and  whose  intense  **  Vaticanism  "  blinded  his  judgment 
and  smote  his  conscience  with  a  stupid  palsy.  He  too 
had  served  on  both  sides,  for  patriotism  he  had  none. 
The  sentiment  of  loyalty  to  one's  native  country  was, 
in  Queen  Elizabeth's  days,  incomparably  weaker  than, 
thank  God,  it  has  become  among  us  since  and  the  frenzy 
of  religious  bigotry  thrust  into  the   background,  if  it  did 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  185 


not  quite  overpower  and  extinguish,  the  sacred  associations 
of  fatherland.3 

It  may  seem  to  some  a  paradox,  but  it  is  nevertheless  a 
fact,  the  truth  of  which  becomes  more  and  more  evident  as 
we  study  the  history  of  Europe  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
that  patriotism,  as  we  now  understand  the  term,  was  a 
sentiment  but  feebly  apprehended  under  the  last  of  the 
Tudors — indeed,  it  was  a  sentiment  that  as  yet  had  scarcely 
any  existence.  In  France  men  were  not  Frenchmen  but 
"  Leaguers  "  or  "  Huguenots  "  in  the  sixteenth  century,  as 
they  had  been  "  Armagnacs  "  or  "  Burgundians "  in  the 
fifteenth.  It  was  Michel  de  I'Hopital  who  first  inspired 
his  countrymen  with  any  enthusiasm  for  France  as  France  : 
the  party  of  the  "  Politiques  "  were  the  earliest  representa- 
tives of  French  patriotism.  In  Germany  the  national  senti- 
ment was  even  fainter.  The  Eeformation  had  done  a  great 
deal  to  divide  men  into  rival  factions  quite  irrespective  of 
their  birthplace.  The  opposite  feeling,  where  it  existed, 
was  not  so  much  national  as  feudal,  and  where  allegiance 
to  the  ''  dominus  "  had  faded  it  had  tended  to  transfer  itself 
less  to  the  temporal  sovereign  than  to  the  shadowy  power 
that  represented  the  idea  of  religion — the  Church  and  its 
head.  It  was  not  till  after  the  tremendous  catastrophe  of 
the  Armada,  when  the  restlessness  of  Spanish  ambition  had 
familiarised  men's  minds  with  the  prospect  of  an  actual 
invasion  of  their  country,  that  they  began  to  appreciate  the 
glory  of  being  Englishmen,  and  recognised  distinctly  the 
paramount  claim  upon  their  loyalty  which  England,  as  a 
nationality,  demanded  of  them,  whatever  their  religious 
convictions  or  whatever  their  creed. 

Sir  William  Stanley  had  not  risen  to  such  a  standing- 
point  as  this.  He  had  persuaded  himself  that  a  heretic 
queen  was  no  queen  over  him.  Enough  that  she  had  been 
pronounced  excommunicate,  and  by  the  Pope  deposed. 
Others  might  split  hairs,  if  they  pleased,  on  the  question 
whether  that  excommunication  were  published  with  due 
formalities ;  for  him,  he  accepted  it  as  final,  and  with  that 
acceptance  the  foundation  of  his  loyalty  to  the  sovereign 


1 86  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

crumbled  away.  Henceforth  he  seemed  to  himself  set  free 
from  every  engagement  which  could  bind  a  man  of  honour. 
Cut  adrift  from  his  anchorage  upon  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciples of  moral  obligation,  right  and  wrong  were  tossed 
about  in  his  mind  in  a  hopeless  imbroglio ;  and  so  treachery 
had  come  to  be  regarded  in  the  light  of  a  sacrifice,  and  the 
huge  proportions  of  some  monstrous  villainy,  in  the  misty 
chambers  of  his  darkened  brain,  grew  into  an  image  of 
heroism  surrounded  by  a  halo  of  lurid  glory.  No  more  con- 
spicuous instance  can  be  pointed  to  in  this  time  of  a  man 
thoroughly  saturated  with  the  detestable  doctrine  that  the 
end  justifies  the  means. 

And  here  it  seems  to  me  that  we  are  brought  face  to  face 
with  that  bad  side  of  the  sixteenth-century  polemics  which 
all  the  special  pleading  in  the  world  can  never  avail  to 
excuse:  the  tendency,  viz.,  to  exalt  the  claims  of  a  creed 
above  those  of  morality — a  tendency  to  sever  the  one  from 
the  other,  even  to  the  verge  of  antagonism — a  tendency  to 
defend  the  interests  of  religion  at  the  expense  of  her  prin- 
ciples, in  common  with  all  those  who  enclose  the  essence  of 
religion  in  the  nutshell  of  a  dogma.  With  upright  and 
earnest  natures  the  devotional  element  for  the  most  part 
absorbed  the  factious  and  immoral  perversions  which  reck- 
less disputants  were  even  then  beginning  to  foist  upon  the 
theology  and  ethics  of  the  age  ;  but  with  men  of  narrow 
intellect  and  low  moral,  cursed  as  they  so  often  are  with  a 
passion  for  intrigue,  the  interests  were  the  essence,  and  all 
else  was  form.  Such  men  gave  their  lives  to  the  one  ;  they 
accommodated  themselves  on  occasion  to  the  other.  Stanley 
had  come  to  regard  the  interests  of  the  Church  as  the  idol 
which  he  was  bound  to  propitiate  by  any  and  every  means : 
with  a  mind  perplexed  and  confused  by  problems  that 
fascinated  all  the  more  because  he  had  not  the  wit  to  solve 
them  ;  a  spurious  pietism  goading  him  on  he  knew  not 
whither ;  wounded  of  late  in  his  pride  by  certain  untoward 
slights  that  stung  him  sorely ;  disappointed  in  his  ambition, 
too,  for  he  had  been  passed  over  by  less  meritorious  com- 
manders ;  and  with  visions  of  a  more  brilliant  career — he 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  187 

was  just  the  man,  sooner  or  later,  to  make  his  name  in- 
famous to  posterity  by  some  act  of  flagrant  and  eccentric 
villainy.  When  Leicester  left  him  at  Deventer  with  almost 
irresponsible  power,  he  felt  that  his  opportunity  had  come, 
atid  he  lost  no  time  in  availing  himself  of  it. 

Mr.  Motley  has  described  in  his  own  vivid  way  the 
incidents  of  the  shameful  treason  in  which  Stanley  and 
Eowland  Yorke  were  the  chief  actors.  In  his  pages  the 
whole  story  may  be  read  in  its  minutest  details.  Here  it 
is  enough  to  say  that,  by  a  plan  cunningly  concerted  between 
the  two  traitors,  the  fort  of  Zutphen  was  delivered  up  by 
Yorke,  and  Deventer  surrendered  by  Stanley,  to  Tassis,  the 
commander  of  the  Spanish  force,  on  the  selfsame  day  (29th 
January,  1587).  Sir  William  Stanley  could  sell  himself ; 
he  could  not  sell  the  honour  of  his  officers.  As  to  the  Irish 
kernes  who  formed  the  rank  and  file,  it  was  an  easy  matter 
with  them  to  change  sides.  They  cared  nothing  for  heretic 
England  and  her  excommunicate  Queen  :  they  cared  very 
much  for  their  own  religion,  which  they  had  some  reason 
for  believing  was  to  be  mercilessly  persecuted  and  pro- 
scribed. They  were  almost  savages,  the  terror  even  of  their 
own  side ;  wild  marauders  to  whom  war  meant  unlicensed 
pillage  ;  uncouth  of  look,  barbaric  in  speech,  hardly  at  all 
amenable  to  discipline,  they  rejoiced  that  they  were  rid  of 
all  control  from  the  English  yoke,  and  exulted  in  being 
soldiers  now  of  the  "  Most  Catholic  King " ;  but  the 
regiment  became  rapidly  disorganised,  it  became  neces- 
sary to  find  new  officers  at  any  rate,  and  that  without 
delay. 

There  were  in  Belgium  no  small  number  of  English 
gentlemen  who  had  taken  refuge  with  the  Spanish  governor 
from  time  to  time,  when  their  religious  convictions  or 
political  partisanship  had  rendered  their  stay  in  their  own 
country  dangerous  or  impossible.  The  exodus  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Queen's  reign  has  been  mentioned  before — it 
was  an  exodus  then  of  men  of  real  learning,  piety,  and 
accomplishments — men  who  had  made  great  sacrifices,  and 
who  desired  only  to  live  in  undisturbed  enjoyment  of  their 


1 88  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

religion;  but  when  the  rebelHon  in  the  north  collapsed,  a 
very  different  company  crossed  the  Channel — this  time  no 
zealots,  but  mere  malcontents  who  had  raised  the  standard 
of  revolt,  and  in  many  cases  actually  borne  arms  against 
their  sovereign ;  adherents  of  the  northern  earls  and  of  the 
Duke  of  Norfolk ;  men  deeply  implicated  in  plots  and 
treasons,  and  bitterly  and  personally  hostile  to  the  Govern- 
ment at  home.  Making  common  cause  with  these,  too, 
there  had  come  over  many  an  ardent  supporter  of  Mary 
Stuart — some  of  them  sincerely  and  loyally  devoted  to  her 
cause — some  of  them  professional  conspirators  who  took 
up  that  cause  as  a  party  cry — but  in  either  case  equally 
vehement  in  denouncing  the  wickedness  of  those  who  had 
compassed  her  death  upon  the  scaffold.  All  these  were  the 
political  exiles.  There  were  others,  again,  who  were  merely 
eager  for  any  military  employment,  and  cared  not  to  which 
side  they  lent  their  swords.  War  was  the  trade  they  chose, 
and  if  they  were  Catholics  they  preferred  the  Spanish 
service  to  that  under  any  Protestant  power.  When  Stanley's 
captains  threw  up  their  commissions,  the  difficulty  was  got 
over  by  accepting  the  services  of  the  unemployed  and 
hungry  volunteers  idling  about  the  purlieus  of  the  Brussels 
Court.  It  took  less  time  than  might  have  been  expected 
to  supply  the  place  of  the  English  officers.  It  was  perhaps 
less  easy  to  fill  up  the  blanks  which  death  and  disease  made 
in  the  rank  and  file.  There  could  be  little  or  no  hope  of 
any  more  Irish  recruits ;  the  new  soldiers  must  needs  be  of 
very  mixed  nationality,  some  were  Italians,  some  French, 
some  Flemings,  some  few  Spaniards ;  it  mattered  little 
where  they  came  from,  for  the  Irish  hemes  spoke  a  tongue 
which  none  could  understand  but  themselves.  There  was 
one  thing,  however,  that  was  essential.  In  the  Irish  regi- 
ment there  could  be  no  difference  in  religion  allowable ;  that 
at  any  rate  was  a  thing  not  to  be  endured  ;  for  if  the 
strongest  tie  which  bound  these  wild  soldiers  together  was 
a  unanimity  in  their  creed,  it  was  needful  that  all  due  pre- 
cautions should  be  used  to  keep  up  that  fanaticism  which 
went  far  to  make  them  fiery  zealots  in  the  shock  of  war. 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  189 

In  those  days  army  chaplains  were  absolutely  unknown  ; 
men  went  forth  to  battle,  or  died  after  it, 

"  Unhousled,  disappointed,  unannealed, 
No  reckoning  made,  but  sent  to  their  account 
With  all  their  imperfections  on  their  heads." 

The  priest  had  no  place  in  the  camp,  and  it  was  assumed 
that  he  was  better  away. 

In  the  autumn  of  1586  the  Prince  of  Parma  had  been 
very  powerfully  impressed  by  a  Jesuit  Father,  Thomas 
Sailly,  a  native  of  Brussels,  whose  health  had  broken  down 
during  his  labours  in  Eussia,  and  who  had  been  sent  home 
to  recruit,  bearing  important  dispatches  and  commendatory 
letters  from  Stephen  Battor,  King  of  Poland.  With  this 
introduction,  he  soon  acquired  a  remarkable  ascendancy 
over  the  Viceroy,  became  his  confessor,  and  after  a  while 
induced  him  to  establish  what  may  be  termed  a  Missionary 
Staff  of  Jesuit  Fathers,  entrusted  with  the  spiritual  welfare 
of  the  soldiery.4  Sailly  and  his  little  band  of  missioners 
set  themselves  to  their  work  with  heroic  energy — preaching 
in  the  camp  at  every  opportunity  ;  attending  day  and  night 
upon  the  sick  and  wounded  in  the  hospitals  ;  on  the  battle- 
field comforting  and  shriving  the  dying ;  doing  all  those 
offices  of  charity  which  have  been  undertaken  so  nobly 
in  our  own  time  by  those  devoted  philanthropists  who 
unconsciously,  during  the  German  campaign  in  France, 
were  splendid  imitators  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers  of  three 
hundred  years  ago.  In  the  hottest  fight  these  men  were 
to  be  seen  carrying  the  wounded  to  the  rear,  and  bending 
over  the  dying  to  catch  their  last  words  of  penitence 
or  prayer  ;  in  the  furious  turmoil  of  some  town  stormed 
and  sacked,  they  were  foremost  in  rescuing  women  and 
children  from  the  brutal  lust  and  cruelty  of  frenzied 
ruffians  who  had  lost  all  self-control.  More  than  one 
or  two  fell  victims,  sometimes  to  disease,  sometimes  to 
their  excessive  rashness  in  exposing  themselves  to  fire, 
sometimes  to  their  unwearied  exertions,  which  were  more 
than  flesh  and  blood  could  bear ;  but  the  admiration  and 


190  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


profound  respect  which  their  unselfish  labours  earned  for 
them,  and  the  novelty  of  the  work  they  gave  themselves  to 
do,  and  did  so  well,  added  enormously  to  the  estimation  in 
which  the  Jesuits  were  held  in  Belgium  then  and  long 
afterwards. 

The  Missio  Castrensis  had  been  established  about  two 
years,  when  Henry  Walpole  was  sent  to  join  it.  His 
readiness  of  speech  and  abundant  culture,  his  captivating 
manner  and  extraordinary  facility  as  a  linguist,  his  long 
and  careful  training,  and  perhaps,  too,  his  birth  and 
connection  with  some  who  were  conspicuous  in  the  army, 
marked  him  out  as  an  eminently  fit  man  for  work  of 
this  kind.  He  himself,  in  his  examinations,  tells  us  that 
his  business  was  to  hear  confessions  in  French  and  English, 
Spanish  and  Italian,  of  all  which  he  was  a  master,  and 
we  may  be  sure  that  he  threw  himself  into  his  new  duties 
with  no  half-heartedness.  But  he  had  not  long  entered 
upon  this  career  before  misfortune  overtook  him.  Flushing 
was  one  of  the  towns  which,  in  1589,  was  held  by  a 
garrison  chiefly  of  Englishmen.  Its  commander  was  Sir 
Eobert  Sydney,  a  brother  of  Sir  Philip  Sydney,  and  so 
nephew  of  the  Earl  of  Leicester,  to  which  earldom  he 
was  himself  raised  by  James  I.  in  1618.  In  one  of  Henry 
Walpole' s  journeys  to  minister  to  the  soldiery,  or  it  may 
be  in  some  attempt  to  confer  with  friends  in  the  town, — 
for  friends  there  he  certainly  had, — he  was  taken  prisoner 
and  committed  to  close  custody.s  We  are  told  that  he 
was  confined  in  the  common  prison  of  the  town  in  the 
depth  of  winter,  with  nothing  but  his  soutane  to  cover 
himself  with,  nothing  but  filthy  straw  to  lie  on,  and 
associated  with  a  herd  of  the  vilest  criminals  incarcerated 
in  the  loathsome  jail  for  every  sort  of  atrocity, — wretches 
who  were  ready  to  strangle  him  for  the  sake  of  his  scanty 
garments,  and  who,  if  the  story  be  true,  actually  had  a 
design  of  murdering  him  and  making  it  appear  that  he  had 
committed  suicide.  But  even  in  this  pitiful  condition  he 
did  not  lose  heart  or  suffer  his  zeal  to  grow  cold.  There  is 
a  touching  incident  which  comes  to  our  notice  during  this 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  191 

the  first   great  trial  of  his  earnestness,  which  shows  that 
his   religious   enthusiasm   had   not   been    extinguished    or 
diminished  during  his  confinement.     It  appears  that  after 
a  time  the  rigour  of  Henry  Walpole's   imprisonment   was 
to  some  extent  relaxed,  and  that   he   was   granted   some 
sort  of  liberty  on  parole.     The  indulgence  so  accorded  him 
was   turned   to   account,    and   at   once   he   set   himself  to 
exercise   his   ministry   in   the   town.     There   was    a    poor 
Flushing   man   named  George  Nachtegael,  who  had  been 
originally   apprenticed  to    a    tailor,    and    afterwards    had 
travelled   to  Madeira  as  a  merchant's  clerk.     He  had  re- 
turned to  his  native  place  after  an  absence  of  four  years, 
and  was  there  when  Henry  Walpole  was  captured.     What 
brought  the  two  together  we  are  not  told,  but  before  long 
the  impression  produced  by  the  Jesuit  Father  upon  the  poor 
mechanic  was  so  profound  that  when  the  order  of  release 
arrived  Nachtegael  resolved  to  pursue  a  religious  life,  and 
to  offer  himself  as  a  lay  brother  to  the  Society.     He  seems 
to  have  followed  Henry  Walpole  to  Brussels,  where  he  was 
received  as  temporal  coadjutor  to  Father  Oliver  Manareus, 
in    November  1592 ;  and  when,  two  years   after,   Edward 
Walpole   was   passing  his  time  of  probation  at  Tournay, 
Nachtegael   was  sent  to  the  same  house  of  novitiate,  and 
doubtless  furnished   him   with   many   of  those  particulars 
of    his    cousin's    imprisonment    which    have    been    pre- 
served.^ 

Among  the  English  officers  serving  at  Flushing  was 
one  Captain  Eussel,  a  Norfolk  man.  He  was  one  of  the 
Eussels  of  West  Eudham,  a  parish  contiguous  to  Houghton, 
and  was  a  cousin  of  the  Walpoles.  It  would  have  been 
dangerous  for  any  recognition  to  pass  between  the  kinsmen 
under  the  circumstances,  but  the  soldier  soon  managed 
to  find  means  of  alleviating  the  suffering  of  the  priest, 
to  provide  him  with  additional  clothing,  and,  what  was 
of  more  importance,  to  communicate  with  his  Norfolk 
friends  and  give  them  intelligence  of  his  perilous  position. 
The  news  had  no  sooner  reached  England  than  Michael 
Walpole   determined  at  once  to  cross  the  seas  and  go  to 


192  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

his  brother's  side.  His  training  under  such  a  wary 
diplomatist  as  John  Gerard,  and  the  practice  he  had  already 
had,  fitted  him  admirably  for  a  mission  which  required 
caution,  tact,  and  presence  of  mind  ;  and  the  young  man 
had  already,  it  seems,  determined  to  offer  himself  to  the 
Society,  and  to  forsake  his  country  at  the  earliest  possible 
opportunity.  Slipping  away  accordingly,  in  December 
1589,  without  a  licence,  he  made  his  way  to  Flushing, 
and  before  long  managed  to  get  access  to  his  brother,  and 
to  confer  with  him  in  his  prison.  Already  it  had  been 
intimated  that  a  ransom  would  be  accepted  for  his  release, 
and  the  money  having  been  found,  partly  by  his  relatives 
and  partly  by  his  Brussels  friends,  he  was  at  length  set 
at  liberty,  in  January  1590,  having  learned,  as  he  himself 
says,  by  his  imprisonment,  "  to  know  better  both  God, 
the  world,  and  himself." 

It  is  at  this  point  that  the  important  series  of  letters 
contained  in  the  archives  of  Stonyhurst  College  comes  in. 
They  cover  a  period  of  fifteen  months,  and  furnish  us 
with  a  very  valuable  picture  of  the  deplorable  state  of 
affairs  among  the  English  refugees  in  Belgium  during  the 
two  years  after  the  Armada.  They  corroborate  in  the 
minutest  particulars  the  miserable  account  which  Lewknor(?) 
gave  of  them  in  1591,  and  they  show  us  the  petty  jealousies, 
quarrels,  intrigues,  and  poverty  of  the  deluded  pensioners 
of  the  Spanish  king,  whose  allowances  were  always  coming 
and  always  in  arrear.7  They  tell  us  of  the  gradual  dwind- 
ling away  of  the  wretched  Irish  rabble — by  courtesy  called 
a  regiment — till  it  almost  seemed  likely  to  disband  from 
lack  of  commanders.  They  give  us  notices  of  the  coming 
and  going  of  Jesuit  priests  and  political  agents  and  Spanish 
generals.  Now  and  then  there  are  scraps  of  news  from 
home,  and  sometimes  faint  whispers  of  dark  intrigues  going 
on,  or  of  wars  and  rumours  of  wars  that  might  be  imminent. 
But  free  and  unrestrained  as  these  letters  are,  and  written 
as  they  are  in  full  confidence  and  affection  by  one  Jesuit  to 
another  (Cresswell),  there  is  not  from  beginning  to  end  one 
single  word  or  hint  which  indicates  anything  approaching. 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  193 


I  will  not  say  to  treasonable  designs,  but  even  to  an 
acquaintance  with  the  existence  of  such  designs  on 
the  writer's  part.  Setting  aside  such  religious  views  as 
we  should  of  course  expect  to  meet  with,  these  letters 
exhibit  to  us  a  man  of  intense  enthusiasm,  of  lofty  piety, 
of  fanaticism  if  you  will,  but  one  whose  faith  was  the 
very  life  of  his  life,  and  the  mainspring  of  his  every  act 
and  thought  and  word.  As  literary  compositions  they  are 
of  little  value;  as  contributions  to  the  history  of  the  time 
they  possess  an  interest  only  for  the  professed  student, 
whose  business  is  to  pursue  research  below  the  surface 
of  perfunctory  manuals ;  but,  as  faithful  representations 
of  the  habits  of  thought  and  tone  of  feehng  prevalent 
among  a  whole  class  of  able,  devout,  mistaken  men,  whose 
lives  were  marred  and  whose  minds  were  unbalanced  by 
the  hideous  tyranny  under  which  they  suffered,  these 
letters  have  a  value  of  their  own.  The  last  of  them  is 
dated  from  Brussels,  the  17th  October,  1591 ;  the  first 
from  the  same  place,  31st  January,  1590.  I  am  inclined 
to  regard  this  as  the  most  useful,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  happiest,  period  of  Henry  Walpole's  life.  He  was 
actively  employed,  after  having  been  for  several  years  in 
a  condition  of  tutelage.  He  was  called  upon  to  exercise 
his  priestly  function,  a  prospect  to  which  he  must  have 
looked  forward  for  years.  He  was  set  free  from  the 
restraints  of  such  tuition  work  as  in  the  case  of  a  man 
of  ambition  and  active  intellect  is  apt  to  become  irksome, 
and  he  was  once  more  brought  into  close  intercourse  with 
his  old  connections  and  friends.  I  am  not  sure  that  there 
is  not  some  slight  difference  in  tone  between  the  earlier 
and  the  later  of  these  letters  :  in  the  later  there  is  more 
of  the  man  of  the  world,  more  of  human  sympathy,  and 
more  interest  in  the  old  associations  from  which  he  had 
been  for  some  time  removed. 

But  if  these  two  years  were  memorable  years  to  Henry 
Walpole  himself,  because  of  the  active  employments  in 
which  he  was  engaged,  they  were  more  memorable  as  they 
affected   other  members  of  his  family.     Michael  Walpole, 

13 


194  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

as  has  been  seen,  left   England  in   December   1589,    and 

after   remaining    apparently   for    some    months    with    his 

brother,  proceeded  to  Eome  in  the  spring  of  the  following 

year,   and   entered   at  the   English   College   there   on  the 

12th   May,    accompanied   by   another   Norfolk   gentleman, 

Thomas    Goodrich.^     About   the   same    time   the   youngest 

brother,    Thomas,    also    crossed   over    into    Flanders,    and 

obtained    a   commission   in    the    Spanish    army.      A    few 

months    after   this   Edward    Walpole    of    Houghton,    too, 

"  abjured  the  realm,"  taking  with  him  his  cousin  Bernard 

Gardiner,   the  two  men  being  received   into   the   English 

College  on  the  20th  October,  and  before  another  year  had 

passed  Christopher   Walpole,    accompanied   by   two   other 

Norfolk   gentlemen,    Thomas    Lucie    [query    Lacy  ?]    and 

Anthony  Eouse,  arrived  at  Eheims.9     Of  all  those  six  sons 

of   Christopher   Walpole   of   Anmer,  only  one  was  left  in 

England  to  represent  the  family.     Meanwhile   with  every 

new  arrival  in  Belgium  came  fresh  tidings  of  the  wonderful 

religious    excitement    that    prevailed    among     the     upper 

stratum  of  society  in  the  Eastern  Counties,  and  the  news 

of  this  one  and  that  one  whom  he  had  known  in  his  youth 

having   been  induced  to  surrender  home  and  country  for 

what  he  regarded  as  the  good  cause,   evidently  disturbed 

Henry    Walpole   not   a   little.      Oh !    if   he   too   might   be 

once  again  at  home,  labouring  in  the  mission  field.     The 

yearning   grew,   till   he  became  unsettled.     The  discipline 

of  all  those  years  of  self-denial  and  self-control  could  not 

avail  to  keep  him  quite  silent  as  to  his  wishes.     **  Gerard 

doeth   much   good ! ''   he   writes   to   his   friend    Cresswell. 

"Was  there  any  hope  that  he  might  be  called  to  join  him? 

Hiri  neart  turned  to  England — to  the  old  Norfolk  home — 

to  the  old  hall  under  the  shadow  of  the  old  church  tower. 

"  Gerard  doeth  much  good  !  "     Might  not  he  do  some  work 

too,    and   take   again   his   father's   blessing,    and    see    his 

mother's  grey  hairs,  and  the  sisters  that  had  passed  from 

childhood  to  womanhood  during  those  years  of  his  absence  ? 

Was  there  danger  in  the  venture  ?     Gerard  had  braved  it 

and  was  still  unharmed,    and   if   the   worst   should   come 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  195 


the  risk  was  as  nothing  to  the  prize — the  prize  of  the 
martyr's  crown.  While  thoughts  Uke  these  were  flitting 
through  his  brain,  suddenly,  in  the  October  of  1591,  he 
received  a  summons  to  present  himself  at  the  novitiate 
at  Tournai. 


NOTES  TO   CHAPTER  VII 

1.  Page  182.  Motley's  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Repiihlic  is,  and  must  always 
remain,  the  chief  authority  on  all  matters  connected  with  the  history 
of  the  Low  Countries  during  the  sixteenth  century,  and  I  must  therefore 
content  myself  with  a  general  reference  here  to  that  most  able  and 
exhaustive  work.  In  Captain  Devereux's  Lives a7id Letters  of  the  Devereux, 
Earls  of  Essex,  vol.  i.  ch.  vii.,  there  is  a  letter  of  Sir  F.  Knollys  to 
Eobert  Earl  of  Essex,  from  which  it  appears  that  Leicester  was  not  the 
only  man  who  embarrassed  himself  considerably  by  the  immense  outlay 
incurred  in  his  expedition.  On  the  treatment  of  Leicester  by  Queen 
Elizabeth,  see  Froude,  vol.  xii.  c.  33. 

2.  Page  183,  There  is  a  very  spirited  account  of  the  affair  given  by 
Stowe  in  his  Chronicle,  which  has  been  extracted  by  Mr.  Wright,  Queen 
Elizabeth  and  her  Times,  vol.  ii.  p.  316. 

3.  Page  185.  A  careful  history  of  the  events  leading  up  to  the 
surrender  of  Deventer,  and  a  very  satisfactory  account  of  Sir  William 
Stanley's  life  and  family  history,  is  to  be  read  in  Mr.  Heywood's  Intro- 
duction to  Cardinal  Allen'' s  Defence  of  Sir  William  Stanley,  edited  for  the 
Chetham  Society,  1851. 

4.  Page  189.  See  Imago  Primi  Sceculi  Societatis  Jesu,  folio,  Antwerp, 
1640,  p.  804  et  seq. 

5.  Page  190.     Father  Cresswell  (to  whom  almost  all  the  letters  of 

Henry  Walpole  are  addressed  which  have  come  down  to  us)  thus  tells 

the   story,    •'  .  .  .  un   iour  allant  k  pied   d'un   College    a    aultre    par 

ordonnance  de  ses  superieurs,  il  fut  prins  par  les  soldats  de  I'ennemy,  & 

emen^  captif  en  la  ville  de  Flessinge  en  Zelade,  qui  est  en  la  puissace  des 

rebelles,  &  h  guarnison  de  soldats  Anglois,  lesquelz  le  retindrent  plus  d'un 

an  entier,  le  traictant  fort  mal :  Et  par  ce  qu'ilz  ne  le  peurent  tuer  comme 

ilz  desiroient,  pour  estre  la  prison  en  la  main  &  puissance  du  Magistrat 

naturel  du  pays,  ilz  offrirent  k  aucuns  larrons  qui  estoient  captifz  avec  luy, 

la  vie  &  liberte  pour  de  nuict  le  mettre  a  mort :  dequoy  le  pere  se  doubta, 

&  pour  eschapper  de  ceste  mort  il  eut  necessairement  besoing  de  veiller 

plusieurs  mois  presque  toutes  les  nuictz,  ce  qui  luy  causa  un  perpetuel 

tourment,  comme  luy  mesmes  depuis  Pa  rac6t6  II  a  aussi  souffert  extreme 

froidure,  pour  navoir  eu  aultre  vestemet  qu'une  seul  vielle  soutane  :  dont 

ayant  compassion   certain   Capitaine  heretique  nom^  Rusel  qui  I'avoit 

cogneu  en  Angleterre,  se  despouilla  d'un  pourpoint  de  rase  qu'il  portoit, 

&  luy  donna  pour  le  revestir  :  En  ceste  maniere  passa  le  serviteur  de 

Dieu  sa  captivity  iusque  a  ce  que  nostre  Seigneur  y  remedia  par  aultre 

voye,  qui  fut  en  inspirant  un  sien  frere  qui  estoit  en  Angleterre  de  venir 

a  Flessingue,  ou  changeant  son  propre  no,  il  entra  au  service  du  mesme 

X96 


ONE   GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE     197 


Capitaine  qui  tenoit  son  frere  piisonnier,  par  ou  il  eut  comraodite  de  le 
veoir  &  traicter  avec  luy,  mesmes  le  pourveoit  de  tout  ce  que  luy  estoit 
necessaire.  D'avantage  il  procura  que  les  catholiques  Anglois  estans  en 
Flandres  le  racheptassent,  comme  ils  feiret  le  renvoyans  h.  Bruxelles  :  & 
fut  si  grand  la  devotion  que  eut  ce  ieune  iouvenceau  son  frere,  voyant  la 
vertu  &  patience  du  pere  Henry,  que  au  mesme  instant  il  delibera  de 
quieter  le  monde,  &  d'aller  a  Kome  pour  entrer  en  religion,  comme  il  feit 
par  effect." 

I  have  been  careful  to  quote  this  passage  and  to  print  it  exactly  as  I 
find  it,  because  the  little  book  from  which  I  make  the  extract  is  one  of 
the  very  greatest  rarity,  and  is  certainly  not  to  be  met  with  twice  in  any 
man's  lifetime.  In  1874  I  heard  of  the  existence  of  a  copy  of  the  book 
which  Father  Possoz  had  seen  and  consulted  at  the  Public  Library  of 
Tournai ;  thereupon  I  started  off  to  get  a  sight  of  the  precious  volume. 
On  my  arrival  I  found,  to  my  extreme  mortification,  that  Father  Possoz 
was  dead,  and  GressioeWs  book  had  disappeared.  The  librarians  knew 
nothing  of  the  book,  and  had  never  heard  of  it ;  it  was  not  in  the 
catalogue,  and  they  declared  that  Father  Possoz  must  have  been  mis 
taken.  On  the  other  hand,  M.  Casterman,  the  very  intelligent  bookseller 
and  publisher  of  Tournai,  insisted  that  Father  Possoz  could  never  have 
made  the  positive  assertion  he  did  Inous  Vavons  enfin  trouv^  dans  celle 
(la  bibliotheque)  de  Tournai]  without  being  sure  of  his  facts,  especially 
as  he  was  known  to  be  an  extremely  accurate  person,  and  wrote  and 
published  his  own  little  Vie  du  Pere  Hennj  Walpole  while  at  Tournai. 
As  there  was,  however,  no  chance  of  seeing  the  book  at  Tournai,  after 
staying  there  three  days  I  gave  up  the  search  as  hopeless.  Some  time 
after  this,  by  a  curious  accident,  in  looking  over  some  MSS.  that  had 
been  entrusted  to  my  care,  I  found  a  note  which  led  me  to  believe  there 
was  a  copy  at  the  Noviciate  at  Tronchiennes,  and  this  copy,  by  the  great 
kindness  of  the  Kector,  now  lies  before  me.  The  book  is  a  little  volume 
in  12mo  of  164  pages.  From  the  dedicatory  epistle,  addressed  "  Aux 
Peres  et  Freres  de  la  Compagnie  de  Jesus,  &  aux  Pensionnaires  des 
Seminaires  Anglois  en  Espaigne,"  it  appears  that  Father  Cresswell 
wrote  the  work  at  Madrid,  and  finished  it  on  the  19th  December,  1595, 
i.e.,  just  eight  months  after  the  execution  of  Henry  Walpole,  The 
licence  to  print  the  Spanish  original  is  dated  at  Madrid  15th  February, 
1596  ;  the  licence  for  the  French  translation,  at  Arras,  9th  [Sept] 
embro  1596.  Though  Oliver  asserts  that  there  was  an  English  version 
of  the  book  published,  I  very  much  doubt  the  truth  of  the  statement.  A 
work  of  which  such  men  as  P.  P.  Augustin  de  Backer  and  Victor  de 
Buck  could  declare,  as  they  both  did  to  me,  that  they  had  never  met 
with  or  heard  of  a  copy,  except  on  the  authority  of  Oliver,  may  pretty 
safely  be  classed  among  those  which  were  intended  to  be  printed,  as  we 
know  it  was,  but  never  saw  the  light. 

In  a  letter  of  Verstegan's  of  the  date  of  1595,  now  at  Stonyhurst  {An(jl. 
A.  vol.  ii.  n.  13),  the  writer  says  :  "  I  wrote  long  since  into  Spain  the 


198  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

manner  of  Fa.  Southwell  his  apprehension,  and  partly  how  he  was 
tortured  by  Topclif.  It  were  good  that  his  apprehension,  together  with 
his  arraignment  and  death,  were  printed  for  the  present  by  itself  in  the 
Spanish  tongue.  As  also  Father  Walpole  his  history  when  it  cometh, 
and  afterwards  they  may  be  put  together  in  Latin  with  others  the  like, 
and  in  the  meantwie  it  ivould  move  much  to  he  in  the  vulgar  tongue.^^ 

The  mistake  of  Father  Cresswell  in  saying  Henry  Walpole  was  in 
prison  for  upwards  of  a  year,  which  all  the  biographers  repeat,  is 
inexplicable.  It  certainly  is  a  mistake,  for  he  was  ordained  in  May  1589, 
by  his  own  showing,  and  he  was  out  of  prison  and  at  Brussels  on  the 
15th  January,  1590  (Eoman  style). —  Walpole  Letters,  p.  2, 

There  remains  to  point  out  another  mistake  into  which  Bar  toll  has 
fallen,  and  which  others  have  copied  from  him.  He  says  that  it  was 
Christopheb  Walpole  who  effected  his  brother's  deliverance.  Neither 
Cresswell  nor  Yepez  (1599)  gives  the  brother's  name,  and  it  certainly  was 
Michael  and  not  Christopher  who  was  the  instrument  for  effecting  his 
liberation.  Michael  arrived  at  Kome  on  the  12th  May,  1590  {Liber 
Peregriiwrum).  Christopher  did  not  enter  at  the  English  College  till 
the  22nd  February,  1592. 

6.  Page  191.  The  following  is  from  the  Album  of  the  Tournai 
Noviciate,  MS.  1016  {Bibliotheque  Royale  de  Belgique,  f.  236).  "  Je 
George  Nachtegael  natif  de  Vlissinghe,  ne  Pan  1563,  envers  le  Pentecoste. 
Mon  Pere  Pierre  Nachtegael  marronier,  ma  mere  Jacquenine  George, 
tons  deux  trespasses.  J'ay  appris  a  coudre  I'espace  de  deux  ans.  J'ay 
servy  depuis  a  un  marchand  aux  Isles  de  Madere  quatre  ans.  Je  scay 
lire  et  escrire.  Estant  recu  a  la  Societe  de  Jesus  a  Bruxelles  le  16 
Novembre  1592,  pour  estre  Coadjuteur  temporel  du  K.  P.  Oliv.  Man. 
Prov.  es  Pays  Bas,  j'ay  exercc  mains  offices  de  Coadjuteur  a  la  maison 
de  la  susditte  Soc*''  en  Bruxelles,  jusqu'a  ce  qu'on  m'a  envoye  a  la  maison 
de  Probation  en  Tournay  a  la  quelle  ie  suis  venu  le  20«  d'Apuril  Pan 
1594.  Et  pour  ce  que  i'avoy  fait  la  premiere  Probation  a  Bruxelles  en 
entrant  la  Societe,  et  on  m'avoit  illic  examine  .  .  .  le  R.  P.  Jean 
Bargius  m'a  examine  generalement,  et  j'ay  respondu  que  .  .  .  le  22 
d'Apuril,  1534. — George  Nachtegael." 

The  following  is  extracted  from  a  Brussels  MS.  3166,  pars  ii.  n.  20. 
"...  Hie  [H.  Walpole]  fuit  olim  Castrensis  Missionis  fidissimus  socius 
et  ad  cohortes  Anglicas  a  suo  superiore  destinatus  inter  quas,  more 
aliorum  patrum,  utilem  semper  navaverat  operam.  Ad  stationem  Aulas, 
qu8e  Brugis  tunc  temporis  erat  constituta,  cum  redire  statuerat  in  itinere 
a  siccariis,  quos  Vreebuteros  (!)  voant,  captus  est,  et  ad  Vlussingamun 
Carcerem  deductus.  In  quo  nunquam  zelum  deposuit  quem  pro 
animabus  a  Deo  conceperat  et  ut  erat  arctissime  ligatus  corpore,  linquam 
tamen  ita  servavit  liberam  ut  Sancta  eloquentia  custodem  carceris 
Catholicam  redderet  ac  se  [He]  ex  curiositate  aut  misericordia  visitante 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  199 


in  avita  fide  confirmaret.  .  .  .  Adolescenteni  quoquc  inter  dum 
eleemosynas  ladferenteni  ita  solidix  pietate  instiuxit,  ut  non  diu  post 
nomen  daret  Societati.  Is  erat  Georgius  Nachtegael  olim  hie  pluribus 
annis  Saciista  et  nunc  Bergis  S.  Winnoci  sedem  fixit.  .  .  ." 

7.  Page  192,  There  is  a  doubt  who  was  the  author  of  the 
remarkable  tract  printed  in  the  Appendix  to  the  Sadler  Fapers,  vol.  ii. 
p.  478,  entitled  llie  Estate  of  the  English  Fugitives. 

8.  Page  194.  He  was  probably  from  North  Creake,  co.  Norfolk. 
Thomas  Goodrick,  Gent.,  of  North  Creake,  married  Suzan,  daughter  of 
KoGER  BozouNE,  of  Wissingsett,  Esq.,  early  in  the  reign  of  James  I. 
(Blomefield,  x.  34).  In  1614  I  find  a  Nicholas  Goodrich,  living  in 
the  capacity  of  private  tutor  in  the  house  of  Lady  Sulyard  at  Haugiilby, 
returned  as  a  "  Popish  Recusant."  In  1615  I  find  on  the  Recusant 
Roll,  "  Wyverston,  John  Goodrich,  Sen.,  William  Goodrich,  Jun., 
and  his  wife  Unica  Goodrich,  Spinster,  daughter  to  W'"  Goodrich" 
[sic] . 

9.  Page    194.     It    appears    that    Edward    Walpole    of    Houghton 
had  made  preparations  for  leaving  England  as  early  as  the  summer  of 
1590,  and  was  at  Brussels  about  August  of  that  year  {Walpole  Letters, 
pp.  10  and   12).      Writing    thence    on    the  5th    September,    1590,   to 
Cresswell,  Henry  Walpole  says,  "  By  the  next  convoy  to  Namur  my 
kinsman  Edward  Walpole  cometh  towards  you,  of  whom  I  wrote  before 
and  sent  his  letters  to  my  brother  Richard.     I  desire  particular  favour 
in  his  behalf,  either  for  the  college  or  toward  my  Lord  Cardinal  if  you 
think  meet.     He  hath  hope  of  exhibition  yearly  out  of  England,  and 
hath  left  an  £100  in  Father  Southwell's  hands,  whereof  some  part  must 
be  for  Mr.  Gardiner  who  was  released  out  of  prison  by  my  Lord  Cardinal's 
letters  to  the  prince  [Parma]  who  will  needs  come  to  Rome,  and  desireth 
either  to  serve  the  Lord  Cardinal  or  to  study  in  the  college.     For  the 
first,  by  reason  sovie  have  imagined  amiss  of  him,  and  he  hath  been  with 
such  as  are  suspect,  I  dare  not  commend  him,  although  I  have  great 
cause  to  think  him  trusty  ;  for  the  second,  I  remit  [him]  to  your  good 
disposition  and  collegiate  order  and  present  estate  there  now  ;  hoping  you 
will  have  an  eye  if  ought  should  be:   but  indeed,  if  the  general  good 
made  me  not  more  'suspicious,  for  my  particular  experience  of  him  and 
occasion  to  wish  him  well  I  desire   all   favour,  and  that  he  may  be 
bestowed   some   way.  .  .  .    Gardiner   did   once   make   the   vow   of   our 
Society,  but   for   some   impediment  Father    Oliverius,    our   provincial, 
dispensed     with     him."     {Walpole     Letters,     p.     15.)     In     the     Liber 
Peregrinorum  of  the  English  College  at  Rome  occurs  the  following  entry  : 
"  1590  Dominus  Eduardus  Walpolus  et  dominus  Bernardus  Gardnerus, 
diocis    Nordovicensis    ambo,   excepti    sunt    hospitio    die    20    Octobris : 
manserunt  diebus  3." 


200     ONE   GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE 

In  another  letter,  dated  Brussels,  22nd  August,  1591,  Henry  Walpole 
says  :  "Our  cousin  John  Walpole,  in  Holland  [Lincolnshire],  is  departed, 
leaving  his  wife  all  that  I  hear,  excepting  xx"  a  year  to  Thomas  and 
Christopher,  who  now  by  God's  grace  have  left  that  and  all  other  hopes 
for  His  service.  Christopher  related  these  things  unto  me,  a,nd  is  on  his 
way  with  Mr.  Hubbard's  brother-in-law  [Anthony  Rouse]  and  another 
at  Eheims." 

This  cousin  is  John  Walpole,  of  Whaplode,  co.  Lincoln,  Esq.  His 
will  is  in  the  P.  C.  C.  (dated  1st  July,  1590),  His  executors  are  to  sell 
all  his  lands  in  Norfolk  and  Lincoln  within  one  year  of  his  death  .  .  . 
"  to  Jane  my  wife  all  my  lands  which  I  bought  since  the  making  of  my 
great  Book  of  Feoffment  set  before  by  this  my  last  will  devised  during 
her  life  .  .  .  and  after  her  death  to  my  brother  Robert  Welby."  To 
said  Robert  Welby  after  decease  of  wife  ...  an  annuity  of  100  marks  per 
annum  for  ever  out  of  lands  in  Whaplode  and  Holbeach  late  Harwells, 
Haltofte,  Knevetts,  and  Wythipols.  "Item  to  Thomas  and  Christopher 
Walpole  sonnes  of  my  uncle,  after  decease  oj  Jane  my  wife"  each  £10  a 
year  for  life  out  of  said  lands  .  .  .  The  lands  I  had  by  my  mother's  will 
to  go  to  Jane  my  wife  for  life  ...  To  the  churchwardens  of  Whaplode 
£4  yearly  for  ever  out  of  lands  in  Whaplode  and  Holbeach  ' '  for  the 
finding  of  a  learned  preacher  for  the  preaching  of  the  Word  of  God  to 
His  glorie  so  long  as  the  inhabitants  of  Whaplode  do  give  him  yearly  £20 
over  and  besides. ^^  By  a  codicil,  dated  7th  October,  1590,  he  leaves 
"...  to  my  uncle  Walpole  [Christopher  Walpole  of  Anmer]  forty 
shillings  to  buy  a  ring.''  His  wife  residuary  legatee.  This  wife  Jane 
was  daughter  and  heir  of  John  Eobarts  of  Woolaston,  co.  Northants, 
Esq.,  by  Cassandra,  daughter  of  William  Apreece  of  Washingleys,  co. 
Hunts.,  Esq.  She  married  (2)  John  Markham  of  Sedgebrook,  co. 
Lincoln,  Esq.  (High  Sheriff  in  1590).  He  died  9th  February,  1593. 
She  married  (3)  Sir  William  Skipworth  of  Cotes,  co.  Leicester,  who 
died  3rd  May,  1610 ;  she  survived  her  third  husband  twenty  years.  Her 
will  is  in  P.  C.  C,  and  was  proved  2nd  December,  1630.  In  it  she  leaves 
"  £20  for  a  tomb  in  Sleaford  for  John  Walpole,  Esq.,  my  first  husband." 
Her  own  monument  is  at  Prestwold.  It  would  appear  that  Thomas 
Walpole  lived  long  enough  to  come  in  for  the  annuity,  which  in  Queen 
Elizabeth's  time  was,  in  Harrison's  judgment,  a  sufficient  maintenance 
for  a  gentleman. 


CHARTER  VIII. 

THE    RETURN    TO    ENGLAND. 

"  Come  back,  come  back,  more  eager  than  the  breeze 
The  flying  fancies  sweep  across  the  seas, 
And  lighter  far  than  ocean's  flying  foam 
The  heart's  fond  message  hurries  to  its  home. 
Come  back,  come  back!" 

Writing  to  Cresswell  on  the  17th  October,  1591,  Henry 
Walpole  had  favoured  his  correspondent  with  a  strange 
piece  of  news.  From  "  divers  captains  and  gentlemen, 
come  from  the  Earl  of  Essex  in  France,"  who  had  been 
'*  reconciled  to  the  Church"  by  his  means,  he  had  learnt — 
vain  and  idle  rumour — that  there  was  "  great  hope  and 
inclination  to  the  Catholic  faith  of  late  in  England,  in 
court,  camp,  and  country."  And  this  three  years  after 
the   Armada. 

Looking  back  as  we  now  can  do,  "with  larger,  other 
eyes,"  upon  the  state  of  feeling  which  prevailed  in  England 
at  this  time,  and  upon  the  intense  irritation  and  bitterness 
against  Spain  and  Rome  which  had  grown  up  in  all  classes 
as  a  consequence  of  the  attempt  at  invasion,  few  things 
strike  us  as  more  curious  than  the  childish  credulity  of  the 
English  exiles,  who  still  deceived  themselves  into  the  belief 
that  they  had  a  strong  party  of  sympathisers  and  supporters 
at  home.  It  was  not  only  that  the  age  was  uncritical,  and 
that  sifting  evidence  was  contrary  to  the  habits  of  the  time, 
it  was  much  more  than  this  :  the  exiles  were  led  astray  by 
their  earnest  longings  to  believe  firmly  what  they  wished 
for  ardently  :  they  became  the  ready  dupes  of  shallow  gossip 
that  reached  them  from  every  point  of  the  compass ;  and 


201 


202  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

though  they  found  themselves  taken  in  every  day  of  the 
week,  nothing  could  teach  them  the  commonest  caution. 
They  were  surrounded  by  a  legion  of  spies  receiving 
Burleigh's  pay  at  so  much  a  quarter,  and  tliey  hneio  it ; 
they  were  playing  a  game  of  hide-and-seek  in  which  the 
stake  was  their  own  lives ;  their  words  were  repeated  as 
soon  as  uttered;  their  letters  were  intercepted,  and  delivered 
into  the  hands  of  the  Lord  Treasurer  to  be  duly  deposited 
in  process  of  time  among  the  archives  at  Hatfield  or  the 
Public  Records,  for  future  generations  to  read.  Their 
elaborate  cyphers  were  sent  to  the  regular  experts  who 
read  them  at  their  leisure  ;  their  lodgings  were  watched, 
their  persons  accurately  described,  their  every  movement 
known,  their  plans  divulged  almost  as  soon  as  formed  ; 
and  yet  these  Jesuit  Fathers  and  Seminary  priests,  whom 
historians  delight  to  represent  as  the  wariest  and  wiliest 
of  conspirators,  proved  themselves  as  deficient  in  craft, 
cunning,  or  sagacity,  and  as  little  a  match  for  their  perse- 
cutors in  the  arts  of  chicane  and  espionage  as  the  kingfisher 
is  said  to  be  a  match  for  the  village  ploughboy,  when  she 
deposits  her  eggs  year  after  year  in  the  same  hole,  though 
her  nest  be  robbed  as  regularly  as  the  summer  comes 
round.^ 

"Great  hope  for  the  Catholic  faith  in  England"  in  the 
year  1591  !  "  I  could  wish  myself  there,  if  all  were 
answerable,"  he  adds  pathetically  ;  and  he  really  believed 
that  there  was  a  career  before  him,  and  that  it  required 
only  a  little  band  of  devoted  missioners  to  stem  the  current 
of  heresy,  and  to  lead  back  England  into  the  right  way 
once  more !  From  across  the  sea  Southwell  and  Gerard 
seemed  to  beckon,  and  a  voice  from  friends  and  kindred 
to  be  calling,  "  Come  over  and  help  us !  " 

Five  days  after  he  wrote  this  letter  to  Cresswell  I  find 
him  at  Tournai,  entering  upon  the  third  year  of  his  pro- 
bation.^ 

The  original  college  of  the  Jesuits  at  Tournai  is  used  at 
the  present  day  as  the  Athen^e,  or  Public  School,  of  the 
town  ;  it  has  remained  unaltered  in  its  main  features  since 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  203 

its  first  foundation.  One  enters  by  the  selfsame  porter's 
lodge  through  which  Henry  Walpole  passed ;  the  old 
quadrangle  is  intact ;  the  old  refectory,  which  could  easily 
have  accommodated  three  hundred  students,  has  been 
divided  into  three ;  the  old  oratory,  which  continued  to 
be  used  as  an  oratory  till  fifteen  years  ago,  has  been 
converted  into  a  dormitory,  though  there  never  have  been 
scholars  to  fill  it ;  a  portion  of  the  stately  cloister  still 
stands  ;  the  vaults  in  which  many  of  the  Jesuit  Fathers 
lie  buried  were  only  bricked  up  in  1870  ;  the  extensive 
gardens  and  grounds,  shorn  of  all  their  picturesqueness, 
still  grow  vegetables  for  the  household  ;  the  old  kitchen  is 
used  to  the  present  day.  One  passes  into  the  chapel :  the 
venerable  altar  is  as  it  was,  but  the  glory  of  the  stained- 
glass  windows,  still  faintly  remembered  by  living  men, 
has  departed,  and  the  whole  place  is  dreary,  desolate,  and 
decaying.  The  good  people  of  Tournai  have  broken  with 
the  priesthood,  and  are  bitter  against  them.  They  have 
made  immense  exertions,  and  incurred  very  considerable 
expense,  in  pushing  their  Athenee,  and  subsidising  it  very 
heavily ;  but  though  there  be  room  in  the  building  for  at 
least  two  hundred  boarders — one  hundred  and  Uucnty  are 
offered  each  a  separate  room  about  sixteen  feet  square — the 
place  languishes  dismally,  and  the  school  is  never  half  filled 
with  scholars. 

How  little  does  persecution  and  spoliation  effect !  In  this 
very  town  of  Tournai,  at  this  very  day,  there  stands  the 
modern  Jesuit  college  in  the  more  modern  quarter.  It  has 
become  so  much  too  small  for  the  accommodation  of  the 
numbers  who  apply  for  admission  that  in  1875  arrange- 
ments had  been  made  for  the  erection  of  extensive  new 
buildings,  though  in  those  already  constructed  there  were 
one  hundred  and  fifty  students,  provided  for  on  the  most 
liberal  scale,  and  presided  over  by  thirty  Jesuit  Fathers ; 
whilst  the  charges  for  each  of  these  students  were  more 
than  double  of  those  paid  at  the  secular  school  at  the  other 
end  of  the  town. 

Henry  Walpole   had   now   been    seven    years   a   Jesuit ; 


204  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

nearly  ten  years  had  passed  since  he  left  his  country  and 
his  home.  He  was  in  the  prime  of  his  manhood  ;  some  of 
the  buoyancy  of  youth  had  passed,  some  of  its  impulsiveness 
been  repressed,  some  of  its  romance,  its  sanguine  hopes,  its 
passionate  chivah-y,  its  inordinate  confidence  in  a  future 
that  was  to  do  so  much  and  triumph  so  surely ;  but  his 
consuming  enthusiasm  had  not  cooled  down  one  whit ;  on 
the  contrary,  it  seems  to  have  been  as  ardent  and  as  intense 
as  ever.  "  Gerard  doeth  much  good  !  "  That,  doubtless, 
was  the  thought  which  haunted  him.  Visions  of  Gerard 
riding  over  Dersingham  Heath  and  sitting  in  the  well- 
known  chimney-corner  of  Sandringham  Hall — warily  pick- 
ing his  way  to  Houghton  or  Harpley  in  the  gloom  of 
evening,  and  holding  serious  converse  with  anxious 
inquirers  in  many  a  manor-house  whose  every  closet  the 
sad  exile  knew  so  well — rose  before  his  mind's  eye,  and 
made  him  long  for  home.  How  could  it  be  otherwise? 
But  the  way  seemed  barred  to  him.  The  rigid  discipline 
of  that  wonderful  Society,  of  which  he  was  a  devoted 
member,  demanded  the  sacrifice  of  his  own  inclinations, 
and  he  made  that  sacrifice  as  a  matter  of  course ;  and  so 
he  was  kept  month  after  month  teaching  boys,  or  at  Tournai 
going  through  the  strict  routine  without  a  murmur,  saying 
his  mass  in  the  early  morning  in  the  college  chapel,  and  in 
the  evening  pouring  out  his  soul  to  God  in  his  chamber, 
begging  for — what  ?  For  nothing  worse,  that  I  can  find, 
than  the  glory  of  being  used  in  his  Master's  service  and 
gaining  that  Master's  guerdon. 

Surely  the  time  has  come  when  we  can  afford  to  be 
generous,  at  least  fair,  to  these  men.  Think  of  them  as  we 
will,  they  had  no  mean  personal  motives  ;  they  had  every- 
thing to  lose,  in  most  cases  they  had  actually  sacrificed  every- 
thing ;  they  had  nothing  to  gain — nothing  that  worldly  men 
would  value  or  desire.  There  is  only  one  way  of  explaining 
their  vehement  zeal,  their  reckless  bravery,  their  dauntless 
persistence  in  the  cause  to  which  they  pledged  themselves. 
Give  them  the  credit  of  earnestness,  and  allow  that  they 
were  sincere,  and  the  history  of  the  world  can  furnish  us 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  205 

with  countless  parallels  of  the  same  heroic  devotion  in  a 
better  or  a  worse  cause  :  but  assume  them  to  have  been 
mere  politicians  and  selfish  schemers — false,  cunning,  and 
hypocritical — and  these  Jesuit  emissaries  and  missionary 
priests,  who  endured  so  much  and  who  fought  their  grim 
fight  so  stubbornly,  present  us  with  a  problem  which  the 
experience  of  mankind  will  not  help  us  to  solve.  We  shall 
never  understand  the  religious  conflict  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  or  indeed  of  any  century,  if  we  put  ourselves  below 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  time. 

For  ten  months  Henry  Walpole  remained  at  Tournai : 
on  the  15th  July,  1592,  he  was  called  to  the  college  of 
Bruges. 3  At  this  point  it  will  be  necessary  to  make  a  short 
digression  in  order  to  understand  the  significance  of  much 
that  follows. 

The  English  College  at  Douai  was  opened,  as  has  already 
been  shown,  in  1568.  Ten  years  of  remarkable  success  had 
rewarded  the  efforts  of  those  who  had  started  it ;  but  after  it 
had  sent  forth  fifty-two  priests  to  pursue  their  vocation  in 
England,  its  work  was  rudely  interfered  with,  and  its  progress 
received  a  temporary  check,  when  the  course  of  events 
necessitated  the  removal  of  the  tuitional  staff  and  of  the 
whole  body  of  students  to  Eheims.  Here  the  college  went 
on  as  before ;  but  once  more,  at  the  end  of  another  ten 
years,  the  clouds  began  to  gather,  and  the  community  at 
Eheims  conceived  some  anxious  fears  for  the  future.  The 
political  horizon  was  indeed  sufficiently  dark.  The 
"  Invincible  Armada "  had  collapsed,  Montmorenci  had 
joined  the  Huguenots,  the  Duke  of  Guise  was  dead.  Prince 
Maurice  was  doing  much  more  than  holding  his  own,  and 
Henry  III.  had  made  truce  with  the  King  of  Navarre.  For 
Spain — and  Spain  meant  the  cause  of  Catholicism  in 
Europe — the  outlook  was  very  gloomy  and  menacing.  It 
became  evident  that,  as  things  stood,  it  would  be  impossible 
to  leave  the  dreaded  Parma  much  longer  in  the  Low 
Countries,  and  if  he  were  recalled  and  his  sword  employed 
elsewhere,  what  might  not  happen  in  Belgium  and  the 
north  of  France  ? 


2o6  ONE   GENERATION  OF 


Accordingly,  Father  Parsons  began  to  look  about  him  for 
an  opportunity  of  providing  some  substitute  for  the  College 
at  Rheims  in  case  it  should  be  compelled  to  dissolve,  and  it 
was  doubtless  a  part  of  his  plan  to  supplant  the  Secular 
College  and  to  found  in  its  place  a  Jesuit  College,  which 
should  be  exclusively  under  the  control  of  the  Society.     It 
was  only  natural  that  Parsons  should  think  of  Spain  as 
the  best  place  for  setting  up  a  new  educational  establish- 
ment :  his  enormous  influence  with  Philip  II.  and  his  court 
would  of  itself  have  been  enough  to  justify  the  plan,  and 
there  may  have  been  some  pardonable  ambition  to  emulate 
Cardinal  Allen  in  the  foundation  of  colleges  which  might 
rival  the  glory  of   those  older  institutions    that  had  pros- 
pered so  vastly  and  produced  such  wonderful  results.     In 
the  spring  of  1589  Parsons  wrote  to  Allen  suggesting  that, 
in  view  of  the  dangers  that  appeared  imminent,  an  attempt 
should  be  made  to  set  up  a  college  in  Spain. 4     The  matter 
was    debated    at   Rome,    and   without   delay — not   to   say 
without  due  inquiry  and  precaution — three  young  scholars, 
Henry  Floyd,  a  Cambridgeshire  man,  John  Blackfan,  and 
John   Boswell,    set   out   with  the   intention    of   making    a 
settlement  in  Spain  for  training  young  men  for  the  English 
mission.     They  arrived  at  Corunna    at  the    end    of    May, 
and  after  many  hardships    made  their  way  to  ValladoUd, 
which  they  reached  almost  penniless,  and  apparently  without 
introductions  and  without  friends.     Wandering  about  the 
streets,  they  fell  in  with  two  young  Englishmen  who  were 
pursuing  their  studies  in  the  town,  and  after  hiring  a  humble 
lodging  they   spent   their   time   in    attending  the  lectures 
which  were  delivered  free  of  charge  in  the  public  schools. 
Their  scanty  hoard  began  to  diminish  wofully,  till,  waxing 
desperate,    they  applied    to   a    charitable   nobleman,   Don 
Alfonso    de    Quinones,  and    laid    their  case    before    him ; 
with  characteristic  munificence  he    relieved  their  immedi- 
ate necessities,  and  supported  them  for   three  months  out 
of  his  own  resources.     Just  at  this  point  Father  Parsons 
arrived  at  Madrid,  and  received  intelligence  of    the  hard- 
ships endured  by  the  little    band.     He    at  once   made   it 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  207 

his  business  to  extricate  them  from  their  difficulties,  and, 
by  diligent  canvassing  among    liis  powerful  supporters    at 
court,  before  a   year   had    gone    by  he    had   purchased    a 
house  for  a  college,  altered    and    enlarged    the    buildings, 
and  obtained  the  grant  of  a  permanent    "  pension  "   from 
the    Spanish    court.     By  the  end  of    October  1590  nearly 
thirty  students    had  emigrated    from    Eheims    alone.     By 
the    spring  of    1591    there    were    upwards    of    seventy  in- 
mates, and  the  numbers  were  said  to    be  still  increasing. 
The  example  set   by  Philip   was   followed    with   more    or 
less  ostentation  by  his  nobles  ;  and  just  when  it  looked  as  if 
the  college  of  Eheims  would  have  to  be  dissolved,  as  the 
result  of  the  skilful  intrigues  and  diplomacy  of  Elizabeth's 
ministers  and  agents  in  France,  a  new  nursery  for  restless 
"Missioners"  and  "Seminarists"  started  into  being,  exactly 
where  they  were  least  assailable.     It  was  a  master  stroke  of 
policy  on  Parsons'  part,  and  might  well  cause  the  English 
Government  uneasiness.     Where  was  this  everlasting  plot- 
ting to  end  ?     How  could  this  hydra  be  crushed  ?     By  this 
time  Elizabeth  began  to   be  seriously  alarmed  for  her  per- 
sonal safety.     Brave  woman  she  undoubtedly  was — none  of 
her  race  were  lacking  in  personal  courage,   but  there  was 
ground  for  uneasiness,  and  her  council  did  their  utmost,  not 
only  to  increase  the  feeling  of  insecurity,  but  actually  to 
establish  a  panic  of  assassination  at  court.     Was  there  not 
a  cause  ?     The  Eegent  Murray  had  been  foully  murdered 
in  broad  daylight  in  Edinburgh    streets  ;  Henry  III.  had 
been  stabbed  to   the  heart    by  Jacques    Clement ;    Guise 
had  been  slain  at  Blois  ;  WiUiam  of  Orange  had  fallen  a 
victim  to  another  miscreant,   though  he  had  survived  the 
frightful  wound  which  had  almost  dispatched  him  in  1582. 
Furious  fanatics  talked  of  the  Queen  of  England  as  the 
fittest  person  to  be  destroyed  by  fair  means  or  by  foul,  and 
rumour,  loud  of  tongue,  never  ceased  asserting  that  the 
adherents  of  Mary  Stuart  were  as  ready  as  ever  to  avenge 
the  death  of  the  "  martyred''  Scottish  Queen.     The  Armada 
had  been  scattered  to  the  winds  and  swallowed  up  by  the 
ocean,  but  worse  might  be  preparing,  and  angry  men  foiled 


2o8  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

are  loud  in  threats  of  what  they  will  do  some  day.  And 
now,  as  if  by  magic,  here  were  fresh  seminaries  springing 
up,  with  all  their  tremendous  organisation  for  turning  out 
emissaries  devoted  to  the  cause  of  winning  back  England 
to  the  Pope's  dominion,  and  of  spreading  abroad  doctrines 
which  Cecil  and  his  compeers  believed  could  only  end  in 
hurling  him  from  power  and  driving  Elizabeth  from  the 
throne. — "  Something  must  be  done  !  "  Something  was 
done  accordingly.  On  the  29th  November,  1591,  the  Queen 
published  her  famous  edict. s 

The  edict  had  scarcely  been  promulgated  when  Father 
Parsons  set  himself  to  compose  a  reply.  His  answer  was 
written  in  Latin,  in  his  usual  vigorous  and  lucid  style ;  for 
however  rugged  and  vulgar  his  English  may  have  been,  his 
Latin  is  always  nervous  and  fluent,  not  without  a  certain 
grace  and  elegance  of  manner  ;  the  authorship  was  ascribed 
to  Andreas  Philopater,  Presbyter  ac  Theologies  Bomanus  ex 
Anglia  olim  oriundus,  and  it  was  published  some  time  in  the 
summer  of  1592.^  Parsons'  answer  w^as  skilfully  conceived  ; 
it  aimed  at  showing  that  the  Queen  herself  was  hardly 
responsible  for  the  cruelty  and  atrocity  of  the  edict  and  of 
the  late  sanguinary  measures  against  the  Seminarists  and 
Jesuits  ;  it  charged  the  guilt  and  ferocity  of  all  these 
measures  upon  the  lords  of  the  council,  and  chiefly  and 
above  all  upon  Cecil,  their  Coryphaeus  ;  upon  him  Parsons 
poured  forth  all  the  vials  of  his  wrath  and  scorn ;  it  is 
surprising  to  see  how  intimately  he  was  acquainted  with 
every  weakness  and  every  vulnerable  point  of  his  adversary. 
Cecil's  birth  was  comparatively  obscure,  at  least  he  could 
boast  of  no  forefathers  who  had  belonged  to  the  English 
gentry.  Cecil  knew  it,  and  was  sore  at  the  thought;  but,  if 
his  grandfather  was  nobody,  might  not  his  remote  ancestors 
have  been  princes  and  nobles  ?  So  he  gave  himself  to 
genealogy,  and  was  for  ever  hunting  for  some  pedigree 
which  might  fit  on  to  himself  and  his  progenitors ;  this 
pedigree-making  was  one  of  the  great  man's  foibles.  In 
the  State  Paper  Office  and  at  Hatfield  there  are  whole 
volumes  full  of  these  genealogical  notes,  and  it  appears  that 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  209 

Cecil  never   could    shake   oif   the    fascination  which    such 
researches  exercised  over  his  mind. 7 

A  few  months  after  the  publication  of  the  edict,  and 
immediately  upon  the  completion  of  the  first  draft  of 
the  answer  to  it,  a  copy  in  manuscript  was  forwarded  to 
the  Treasurer  by  one  of  his  spies  in  Flanders.  Cecil  was 
gratified  by  the  promptitude  of  his  agent,  and  addressed  to 
him  a  letter  of  thanks  for  his  zeal,  and  at  the  same  time 
added  some  comments  upon  the  reply.  Parsons  had  laughed 
at  him  for  his  lowly  birth,  retorting  upon  him  a  sneer 
which  the  edict  itself  contained.  Cecil  in  his  letter  had 
betrayed  his  mortification,  and,  writing  to  the  spy,  entered 
into  particulars  about  his  supposed  ancestors,  claiming 
descent  from  "Welsh  princes,  and  asserting  that  his  family 
had  originally  been  settled  at  Sitsil  in  Wales.  When  the 
Kesponsio  was  published,  there  before  the  eyes  of  amazed 
Europe  was  Cecil's  own  letter,  translated  into  Latin,  with 
all  its  ridiculous  pretensions  exposed.  Parsons  was  vastly 
pleased,  and  made  himself  infinitely  merry  ;  he  did  not 
spare  his  victim  ;  all  the  resources  of  sarcasm  and  irony 
were  used  to  sting  the  Treasurer,  and  Cecil,  deeply 
mortified,  writhed  under  the  lash.  Doubtless  all  possible 
means  were  used  to  keep  the  book  out  of  England  ;  but 
besides  the  interest  which  the  Catholics  had  in  giving  it 
a  wide  circulation,  there  were  too  many  people  in  high 
position,  who  had  no  great  love  to  the  Lord  Treasurer, 
to  allow  of  such  a  bonne-bouche  as  this  bitter  and  telling 
attack  to  remain  unknown,  unread,  and  unsold.  Vexed 
and  intensely  mortified,  Cecil  was  weak  enough  to  betray 
the  pain  of  the  sting  ;  and  when  Philopater's  book  could 
no  longer  be  suppressed,  with  fidgety  ill-temper  he  printed 
a  sort  of  reply,  trying  to  make  the  best  of  an  attack  w^hich 
might  more  safely  have  been  left  alone.  This  little  episode 
would  be  unimportant  but  for  one  consideration :  the 
English  translation  of  Philopater  was  executed  by  Henry 
Walpole,  and  this  copy,  which  the  spy  forwarded  to 
England,  must  have  been  made  almost  immediately  after 
Walpole   had   completed  his   version   during   his    stay   at 

14 


2IO  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

Tournai.  When,  after  divers  tortures  in  the  Tower  in 
1594,  Henry  Walpole  in  his  agony  let  out  all  the  harm  he 
had  to  tell  about  himself,  and  as  little  as  possible  about 
any  others  whom  he  could  have  injured,  one  of  his  con- 
fessions was  that  he  had  translated  Philopater's  book.  That 
signed  his  death-warrant.  Cecil  never  forgot,  never  forgave; 
and  the  man  who  had  once  provoked  his  resentment, 
and  hit  him  hard  where  he  felt  most  tenderly,  might 
escape  for  long,  but  if  ever  he  should  be  hunted  down 
would  certainly  not  be  spared. 

It  was  while  Henry  Walpole  was  at  Bruges  that  this 
translation  was  executed,  and  he  may  have  been  engaged 
upon  this  very  work  when  he  received  his  order  from 
Claudius  Aquaviva,  General  of  the  Society,  to  join  Parsons 
in  Spain.  This  appears  to  have  come  to  him  late  in 
the  autumn.  Some  delays  occurred  which  hindered  his 
setting  out  immediately,  but  in  the  end  of  December  we 
find  him  at  Seville. 

The  English  Seminary  at  Seville  had  been  formally 
opened  about  a  month  before  his  arrival,  but  the  chapel 
had  not  as  yet  been  consecrated,  and  he  hurried  from 
Belgium  to  be  present  at  the  ceremony.  A  great  deal  of 
importance  was  attached  to  this  event,  and  the  opening 
of  the  chapel,  which  took  place  on  the  29th  December,  1592, 
was  celebrated  with  extraordinary  pomp  and  magnificence, 
of  which  an  eyewitness  has  given  some  account.^ 

At  the  first  High  Mass  there  "  were  present  the  Cardinal 
Archbishop  of  the  city,  who  was  received  with  a  Latin 
oration,  the  Assistant  and  Senators,  great  store  of  eccle- 
siastical prelates  and  doctors,  the  superiors  of  the  religious 
orders  and  other  men  of  authority,  gravity,  and  nobility, 
a  great  number.  At  the  end  of  the  mass,  four  scholars 
took  the  oath  of  'priesthood  and  retiirning  into  E'ligland, 
according  to  the  manner  of  the  Seminaries.'' 

Henry  Walpole  took  part  in  this  ceremony,  and  the 
day  was  rendered  especially  interesting  to  him  by  the 
presence  of  his  brother  Eichard,  who  had  recently  arrived 
in    Spain   from   Italy,    and   whom    he   had   not    seen    for 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  211 

years.  The  meeting  must  have  been  an  affecting  one  for 
the  brothers  in  their  then  condition  of  mind;  each  was 
prepared  for  any  venture  or  any  labour  which  his  sense 
of  duty  might  urge  him  to  undertake ;  and  Eichard  had 
already  volunteered  to  start  upon  the  English  mission 
to  which  he  would  undoubtedly  have  been  sent,  but  that 
just  on  the  eve  of  his  intended  departure  he  was  kept 
back  for  other  and  very  different  employment. 

The  brothers  appear  to  have  remained  together  at  Seville 
for  two  months,  after  which  Henry  was  dispatched  to 
Valladolid:  there  at  last  the  long-desired  summons  came. 
He  himself  has  told  us  the  brief  story.9 

"  I  was  minister  [at  Valladolid]  till  Fa.  Parsons  coming 
to  Valladolid  about  June,  anno  93,  did  find  me  not  so 
apt,  as  he  said,  for  that  office,  and  told  me  he  was  in 
doubt  whether  to  send  me  to  hear  confessions  in  Seville 
or  to  Lisbon,  where  is  a  residence  begun ;  and  suddenly  he 
told  me  he  ivas  resolved  I  should  go  mto  England  if  I  did  not 
refuse,  having  order  thereto  from  the  General  and  Provincial; 
and  so  he  and  the  Bector  did  determine." 

Father  Parsons  had  been  in  close  communication  with 
Henry  Walpole  now  for  nearly  a  year.  It  is  clear  he 
had  been  watching  him  carefully  all  the  time  and  scrutinis- 
ing him  narrowly.  Of  Walpole's  earnestness  and  devotion 
there  was  no  question ;  of  his  zeal  and  courage  he  had 
given  ample  proofs ;  but  whether  his  learning  was  extensive 
and  solid  enough  to  be  turned  to  account  in  the  lecture- 
room,  or  could  be  used  in  the  controversial  battles  that 
were  always  going  on,  was  doubtful.  What  was  to  be  done 
with  this  enthusiast  of  brilliant  and  versatile  talents  rather 
than  of  commanding  intellectual  power,  who  peradventure 
had  mistaken  his  vocation  when  he  threw  himself  into 
the  ecclesiastical  life,  and  forsook  the  career  at  the  bar 
in  which  he  was  qualified  to  make  a  mark,  as  his  uncle  had 
done  before  him  ? 

Parsons  must  have  known  only  too  well  what  a  dreamy 
prospect  he  was  offering  this  man  of  thirty-five  years  of  age 
when  he  proposed  to  him  "  hearing  confessions  at  Seville 


212  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

or  Lisbon,"  and  bow  o>ny  career  or  venture  would  appear 
preferable  to  one  in  whom  the  faintest  stirrings  of  ambition 
or  the  least  traces  of  self-will  survived.  ''  Suddenly  "  came 
the  question,  "  Would  he  go  into  England  ?  "  "  Yes  !  " 
Without  a  moment's  doubt  or  hesitation.  Yes  !  Though 
a  thousand  edicts  threaten  and  a  thousand  deaths  deter. 
''  Gerrard  doeth  much  good.     Why  not  I  ?  " 

So  here  was  another  Jesuit  Father  going  to  be  hurled 
against  the  ranks  prepared  to  receive  him.  Ay !  but  there 
was  something  more.  It  must  be  remembered  that  just 
at  this  moment  it  was  more  than  ordinarily  advisable, 
it  was  almost  necessary,  that  the  Society  of  Jesus  should 
show  some  signal  evidence  of  its  activity,  and  of  the 
readiness  of  its  members  to  take  part  in  the  English 
mission.  Douai  and  Eheims  could  boast  of  their  army 
of  martyrs  and  confessors,  of  their  recruits  always  ready 
to  enlist,  of  their  volunteers  eager  to  lead  the  forlorn  hope 
at  an  hour's  warning.  If  this  new  seminary  of  Valladolid 
was  to  emulate  the  renown  of  the  French  college,  it 
must  have  its  baptism  of  blood  and  its  martyrs  with  their 
crown  and  palm.  Parsons  must  have  felt  all  this,  and 
none  knew  better  than  he  the  danger  and  the  risk.  One 
is  almost  tempted  to  believe  that  the  critical  question 
was  wrung  from  him,  as  if  he  even  at  the  eleventh  hour 
doubted  his  man,  and  as  if  for  himself  he  would  rather 
have  been  spared  that  trial  of  the  superior  officer,  who, 
in  the  discharge  of  a  duty  laid  upon  him,  sends  his  sub- 
ordinate to  what  he  knows  is  likely  to  end  in  death,  even 
though  that  death  may  prove  honourable  and  glorious. 

But  the  decision  once  arrived  at  there  was  no  more 
delay.  Henry  Walpole  had  made  his  choice,  and  at  once 
he  stood  forth  as  a  representative  man.  He  was  no  longer 
a  mere  Jesuit  Father,  he  was  a  Jesuit  Father  who  was 
about  to  enter  upon  the  English  mission,  and  as  such 
he  became  a  very  valuable  instrument  in  Father  Parsons' 
hands.  Liberal  as  had  been  the  contributions  and  lavish 
as  the  promises  had  been,  the  funds  for  the  new  seminaries 
in  Spain  had  come  in,  and  were  coming  in,  more  slowly 


A   NO J^ FOLK  I/O  USE  213 

than  could  be  desired.  The  buildings,  as  usual,  cost  more 
than  had  been  estimated,  and  though  the  scholars  were 
many  the  resources  for  their  maintenance  ran  short. 
Moreover,  it  was  by  no  means  intended  to  drop  the 
French  and  Belgian  seminaries,  and  yet  they  were  in 
sore  distress,  with  creditors  pressing  and  payments  all 
behindhand.  Money  was  getting  scarcer  and  scarcer. 
The  English  vessels  were  scouring  the  seas,  plundering 
King  Philip's  homeward-bound  ships,  and^  the  enormous 
booty  gained  was  so  much  taken  from  the  Spanish  treasury 
and  passing  into  the  hands  of  English  pirates.  Philip  II. 
and  his  courtiers  promised  largely  and  did  their  best  and 
meant  to  keep  their  word,  but  pay-day  came  and  pay  was 
wanting.  Meanwhile  so  persuaded  was  every  Spaniard, 
and  every  man  who  looked  to  the  Spanish  king  for  support, 
of  the  unbounded  resources  at  his  command,  that  the 
thought  never  suggested  itself  that  after  all  Philip  was 
almost  bankrupt.  If  only  a  petitioner  could  gain  access 
to  this  omnipotent  dispenser  of  gold,  there  could  be  no 
limit  to  the  resources  at  his  command  :  the  only  difficulty 
was  how  to  get  admission  to  the  awful  presence  of  the 
potentate  before  whom  common  men  might  well  veil  their 
faces.  While  Henry  Walpole  was  at  Valladolid  a  certain 
priest  named  Thorne  had  come  into  Spain  to  beg  for 
contributions  towards  the  establishment  of  a  Jesuit  college 
at  St.  Omer.  It  does  not  appear  that  Thorne  was  a 
Jesuit  himself,  or  how  or  by  whom  he  had  been  accredited, 
but  he  was  in  Spain  as  a  petitioner.  Week  passed  after 
week,  but  he  found  himself  helpless ;  he  could  get  no 
audience,  and  the  courtiers  appear  to  have  taken  no  notice 
of  him  or  his  petition.  The  St.  Omer  College  scheme, 
however,  was  one  which  Parsons  had  at  heart,  and  though 
he  could  allow  Thorne  to  drop  out  of  notice,  he  was  not 
likely  to  despair  of  St.  Omer  without  an  effort.  What 
an  obscure  priest  might  be  powerless  to  achieve,  that 
might  be  easily  effected  by  a  Jesuit  Father,  who  was 
about  to  set  sail  for  England,  holding  his  life  in  his 
ha/uds. 


214  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

Accordingly  Henry  Walpole  was  put  forward  as  the 
petitioner  who  should  appeal  with  more  emphasis  for  the 
funds  that  were  so  grievously  needed.  He  was  furnished 
with  letters  to  the  king  and  the  most  powerful  nobles  of 
the  court,  and  dispatched  to  the  Escurial  with  all  the 
moral  support  he  could  desire.  He  was  received  with 
marked  distinction  by  the  courtiers,  assured  that  the 
king  had  granted  his  request  and  had  already  sent  letters 
to  St.  Omer  ordering  the  money  to  be  paid,  and  finally 
was  told  that  he  was  to  be  admitted  to  the  august  presence 
of  his  majesty,  whom  it  would  be  politic  to  thank  for  past 
favours  before  begging  for  their  continuance  in  the  future. 
Don  Juan  Crestoval  de  Mora  seems  to  have  been  specially 
interested  in  the  English  mission,  and  Henry  Walpole 
thus  tells  the  story  of  his  interview  with  the  great  man  : 
"  Don  Juan  did  talk  familiarly  awhile  with  me,  asking 
me  of  F.  Parsons  and  the  seminar}'-,  and  how  I  would 
get  into  England,  and  he  said  he  heard  say  that  there 
was  a  new  religion  in  England  of  such  as  refused  to  go 
to  church ;  demanding  whether  they  were  like  the 
Catholics,  and  what  hope  there  was  of  the  conversion  of 
England.  ..."  He  goes  on  to  tell  how,  not  many  days 
after,  "  by  Ruis  de  Velasco's  means  I  had  audience  of 
the  K.  as  daily  many  have,  and  told  him  that  being  sent 
into  England  by  my  superior  to  labour  to  convert  some 
souls  there ;  and  having  received  his  Majesty's  new  letters 
for  St.  Omer,  I  did  humbly  thank  his  Majesty  for  all  his 
liberalities  to  the  poor  students  of  our  nation,  who  all, 
therefore,  would  pray  to  God  for  him,  and  I  hope  many 
other  hereafter  whom  they  should  convert  to  the  Catholic 
faith  :  beseeching  him  to  continue  his  alms  and  liberality 
towards  them  there :  'Twas  the  effect  of  the  speech  I 
did  speak  unto  him,  and  he  very  low,  being  weak,  so  as 
I  could  scarcely  hear  him,  said  only  these  words  that  I 
could  understand,  Dios  os  Encamina  .  .  . ;  this  done  I 
returned  to  Valladolid,  and  from  thence  to  Bilbao." 

He  set  out  from  the  Escurial  on  the  3rd  or  4th  August, 
1593,  and  reached  Bilbao  at  the  end  of  the  month.     At 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  215 

Portugaletta  he  found  a  vessel  bound  for  Calais,  and, 
taking  passage  in  it,  embarked  on  the  3rd  September ; 
the  voyage  was  a  very  tempestuous  one,  and  occupied  so 
long  a  time  that  his  friends  made  up  their  minds  that 
the  ship  had  foundered  at  sea,  so  that  when  he  arrived 
at  Douai  on  the  27th  of  the  month  he  was  greeted  with 
immense  joy  by  the  college  authorities. ^° 

After  a  short  stay  at  Douai  he  returned  as  far  as  St. 
Omer,  and  here  he  fell  in  with  one  Edward  Lingen,  whom 
he  had  known  previously  as  an  officer  in  Sir  W.  Stanley's 
regimeni,  and  who  had  been  living  by  his  wits  for  some 
years,  aiter  being  driven  out  of  England  by  the  penal 
laws.  Lingen  was  one  of  those  many  soldiers  of  fortune 
who  were  at  this  time  wandering  over  Europe  and  ready 
to  take  service  under  any  master,  willing  to  embark  in 
any  enterprise  that  offered  pay  or  prize-money.  In  the 
sixteenth  century  it  was  counted  no  disgrace  or  reproach 
to  a  mm  that  he  should  place  his  sword  at  the  disposal 
of  the  King  of  France  to-day  and  the  King  of  Spain  to- 
morrow. The  profession  of  arms  had  in  those  days  a 
cosmopoLtan  character,  and  no  one  thought  any  the  worse 
of  a  "free  lance  "  who  in  the  course  of  his  career  changed 
sides,  provided  that  he  was  faithful  to  his  engagements 
during  the  campaign,  and  did  not  violate  a  trust  committed 
to  him.  To  use  his  sword  against  his  own  country 
was  considered  to  some  extent  discreditable,  but  even 
this  admitted  of  an  excuse,  and  was  looked  upon  pretty 
much  in  tie  same  light  as  for  a  barrister  to  defend  a 
prisoner  chirged  with  a  capital  offence ;  with  this  difference, 
that  the  one  course  luas  in  those  days  possible,  and  the 
other  was  not.  Lingen  was  a  soldier  of  fortune :  for 
some  years  he  had  been  a  buccaneer,  as  were  Drake  and 
Hawkins  aid  many  another  dashing  sailor  from  the  Cinque 
Ports :  thej  carried  their  prizes  into  Plymouth,  he  carried 
his  into  Dunkirk,  and  therefore  as  a  matter  of  course  they, 
when  occasion  served,  preyed  upon  Flemings  and  Frenchmen 
and  Spaniards,  he  upon  Flemings  and  Frenchmen  and 
Englishmen     His   success    had   been   but   moderate,   and 


2i6  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

he  had  tired  of  the  game.  A  yearning  to  get  back  to 
England  at  all  hazards  had  taken  possession  of  him, 
and  when  he  learnt  that  Henry  Walpole  was  pre- 
paring for  a  homeward  voyage  he  determined  to  join 
him.  With  the  usual  want  of  reserve  and  caution  which 
characterised  the  proceedings  of  the  missioners,  the 
"  secret "  of  Henry  Walpole's  intentions  soon  became 
generally  known,  and  among  others  who  heard  of  it  was 
his  brother  Thomas,  who  had  also  held  a  commission  in 
Stanley's  regiment,  but  had  become  disgusted  with  a  course 
which  brought  neither  credit  nor  pay.  Henry  Walpole 
had  still  some  business  to  carry  on  in  Belgium,  which 
occupied  him  till  the  beginning  of  November ;  then  we  find 
him  once  more  at  St.  Omer  ready  and  eager  for  the  start. 
But  once  again  his  patience  was  put  to  trial.  The  plague 
was  raging  in  London  and  its  environs.  '•  For  all  this 
year,"  says  Camden,  "  London  was  most  grievously  afflicted 
with  the  pestilence,  Saturn  running  through  the  utJermost 
point  of  Cancer  to  the  beginning  of  Leo,  as  in  the  yeir  1563, 
insomuch  as  there  died  this  year  of  the  pestileice  and 
other  diseases,  within  the  city  and  the  suburbs,  17,890 
persons,  besides  William  Kowe,  Mayor,  and  three  Aldermen." 
The  consequence  was  that  "  from  Calais  no  Fraich  ship 
went  by  reason  of  the  sickness,"  and  when  the  brothers 
with  Lingen  attempted  to  get  a  passage  from  Calais  they 
failed,  and  returned  to  St.  Omer,  waiting  for  some  turn 
in  the  tide  of  affairs." 

During  his  stay  there  Henry  Walpole  was  employed 
in  making  some  preliminary  arrangements  foi  the  new 
Jesuit  College,  which  was  opened  in  the  following  year. 
He  kept  up  a  correspondence  with  Parsons,  Cresswell, 
More,  &c.,  during  the  month  of  November,  and  three  of 
his  letters  have  been  preserved,  and  were  printed  in 
Cresswell' s  short  biography.  Like  every  other  letter  of 
the  writer,  they  breathe  a  spirit  of  ecstatic  fgrvour  and 
somewhat  passionate  devotion.  They  are  full  of  prayers 
for  success  in  "winning  souls  "  ;  but  through  them  all  there 
is  a  tone  of  despondency,  and   more   than   one  indication 


s 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  217 

that  the  writer  had  a  presentiment  of  the  fate  that  awaited 
him,  and  which,  though  he  foresaw,  he  was  in  no  wise 
anxious  to  escape.  In  truth,  |One  sees  in  this  man  just 
that  perverse  and  infatuate  hankering  after  the  honour  of 
"  martyrdom  "  which  Donne,  fifteen  years  after,  so  earnestly 
and  grandly  reproved  in  his  great  polemical  work  The 
Pseudo  Martyr.  The  missioners  were  excited,  and  goaded 
on  to  look  upon  death  at  the  stake  as  the  most  glorious 
end  of  life  that  could  be  desired ;  and  to  do  them  bare 
justice,  it  must  be  confessed  that  when  it  came  to  surren- 
dering their  lives  they  showed  no  craven  reluctance  to 
meet  their  doom.  In  the  torture  chamber  they  broke 
down  again  and  again  :  at  the  gallows  not  a  single  case 
of  cowardice  has  been  recorded. 

And  so  when  week  passed  after  week,  and  the  prospect  of 
finding  any  opportunity  of  crossing  the  Channel  in  the  usual 
way  seemed  as  far  off  as  ever,  and  when  too  his  business  at 
St.  Omer  came  to  an  end  and  tidings  arrived  that  the 
English  Government  was  more  vigilant,  strict,  and  uncom- 
promising than  ever — when  too  the  opinion  seemed  gaining 
ground  that  this  was  no  time  to  be  sending  fresh  Jesuit 
emissaries  to  be  arrested,  imprisoned,  and  hung,  with  little 
chance  of  their  doing  any  useful  work  before  they  were 
apprehended — Henry  Walpole  began  to  be  seriously  afraid 
that  if  he  delayed  much  longer  a  fresh  order  might  come 
from  headquarters  recalling  him  from  the  English  mission 
altogether.  At  Valladolid  he  had  been  one  of  at  least  three 
priests  who  had  been  set  apart  for  this  work :  others  had 
already  been  stopped  by  their  superiors  :  if  he  delayed  he 
too  might  be  sent  for  to  hear  confessions  or  perform  some 
other  routine  work  in  Belgium  or  Spain.  The  thought  of 
such  a  contingency  became  unbearable,  and  he  determined 
to  run  any  risk  rather  than  not  get  upon  English  soil  once 
more. 

Just  at  this  time  there  were  lying  in  Dunkirk  harbour 
three  "vessels  of  war,"  as  they  were  vaguely  called  in  the 
language  of  the  time  ;  in  other  words,  three  pirate  craft 
fitting  out  for  sea ;  for  naval  warfare  was  then  carried  on 


2i8  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

in  the  Channel  almost  exclusively  by  private  adventurers, 
who  advanced  money  for  the  expenses  and  shared  the  risk 
and  the  profits  of  success.     A  bold  buccaneer  was  always 
sure  to   find   speculators  willing  to  supply   the   necessary 
funds,  and  there  was  no  lack  of  reckless  spirits  eager  to  sail 
under  the  flag  of  any  dare-devil  captain.     There  was  little 
or  no  regard  to  nationality,  and  in  this  particular  case  we 
are  not  told  whether  the  ships  called  themselves  French  or 
Spanish  :  they  were  simply  "  vessels  of  war,"  which  were 
about  to  cruise  along  the  east  coast  of  England  and  make 
what  prizes  they  could  pick  up  ;  they  were  to  sail  in  concert, 
keeping  in  sight  of  one  another,  and  to  play  what  havoc  they 
could  upon  any  luckless  merchant  ship  that  fell  in  their 
way,   it   mattered   very   little   whether   she   were   French, 
English,  or  Dane.     Lingen  heard  of  the  little  fleet,   and 
Henry  Walpole  determined  to  secure  a  passage.     He  made 
his   arrangements,  and   stipulating   that   he   and   his   two 
companions  should  be  set  ashore  on  the  coast  of  Essex, 
Suffolk,  or  Norfolk,  he  embarked,  and   the  ships  weighed 
anchor  about  the  20th  November,  1593.     They  were  not  the 
only  passengers.     Another  priest,  who  travelled  under  the 
name  of  Ingram,  and  who  appears  to  have  been  charged 
with  some  political  mission  for  Scotland,  and  had  his  own 
plans  to  carry  out,    had  already  bargained  for  a  passage  ; 
and  a  spy  of  Walsingham's  too  had  secured  a  berth  without 
the  knowledge  of  the  others  of  the  party.     Ingram  was  a 
nephew  of  Lingen's,  and  it  was  probably  through  him  that 
the  information  came  of  the  intended  cruise  of  the  '*  vessels 
of  war."     They  set  sail  in  very   boisterous   weather,  with 
a   head   wind,  at  the  worst   season   of  the  year,  and  had 
a  rough  time  of  it.     On  the  3rd  of  December  they  were  off 
the  English  coast,  and  on  that  day  they  took  a  prize ;  but 
they  had  been  carried  farther  northwards  than   Essex  or 
Suffolk  or  Norfolk,  past  the  Wash  and  past  the  Humber, 
and  by  the  evening  of  the  4th  they  were  off  Flamborough 
Head.     Ingram  was  bound  for  Scotland,  he  would   have 
been  quite  content  to  go  on.     Henry  Walpole  had  far  over- 
shot his  mark.     Anywhere  on  the  coast  of  Norfolk  or  even 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  219 

Lincolnshire  he  would  have  found  himself  very  soon  among 
friends,  but  to  land  in  Yorkshire  was  to  rush  into  the  lion's 
jaws.  Nevertheless  the  weather  showed  no  signs  of  mend- 
ing ;  it  was  impossible  to  say  where  next  he  might  find 
himself,  and  as  the  captain  told  him,  to  use  his  own  words, 
"  that  he  could  not  touch  the  land  where  he  would,  and  the 
wind  they  said  was  not  good  .  .  .  for  very  weariness  of  the 
sea  I  desired  them  to  set  me  on  land  anywhere,  or  else 
carry  me  back,  and  so  they  put  me  on  land."  Unfortunately 
he  and  his  two  companions  were  not  the  first  to  leave  the 
ships.  The  spy,  who  was  a  passenger  on  board  another  of 
the  vessels,  managed  to  land  before  them,  and  slipped  away 
to  carry  information  to  York.  The  three  companions  were 
set  ashore  at  Bridlington,  and  the  ships  put  out  to  sea 
again.     Henry  Walpole  was  in  England  once  more.' 


12 


NOTES  TO   CHAPTER  VIII 

1.  Page  202.  In  the  Eecord  Office  there  is  a  collection  of  the  ciphers 
employed  by  the  agents  of  the  Government  and  their  opponents  during 
the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth.    It  occupies  three  thick  quarto  volumes. 

2.  Page  202.  The  letter  is  dated  Brussels,  17th  October,  1591. 
{Walpole  Letters,  p.  44.)     For  his  summons  to  Tournai,  ci.  supra,  p.  138. 

3.  Page  205.  For  this  statement  my  authority  is  the  MS.  Life  in  the 
Collectanea  Anglo -Catholica,  vol.  i.  £o.  149,  in  the  Archives  of  the 
Bishop  of  Southwark ;  now  under  the  custody  of  the  Fathers  of  the 
Oratory.  I  think  this  Life  must  be  a  translation  from  some  very  early 
document,  and  I  suspect  that  another  translation  is  the  Latin  Life  now 
at  Stonyhurst,  which  was  discovered  some  years  ago  in  the  archives  of 
the  city  of  Brussels.  Both  these  Lives,  if  they  are  not  the  same,  contain 
some  particulars  not  to  be  found  in  Yepez,  Bartoli,  or  Father  More. 

4.  Page  206.  For  a  full  account  of  the  matter  see  Tierney's  Dodd, 
vol.  ii.  p.  176,  and  the  Notes  in  the  Appendix. 

5.  Page  208.  The  text  of  the  edict  is  to  be  found  in  Strype,  Annals, 
iv.  p.  78  et  seq. 

6.  Page  208.     See  a  letter  in  the  Athencsum,  No.  2602,  Sept.  8,  1877. 

7.  Page  209.  There  is  a  very  curious  note  given  in  the  Quarterly 
Revieio,  No.  282,  p.  22.  "  Cecil  is  labouring  for  peace.  ,  .  .  He  has 
found  a  new  pedigree  by  his  Grandmother  from  the  Walpoles.  ..." 
This  passage  occurs  in  a  letter  of  the  21st  July,  1599.  Just  two  years 
before  this  Edward  Walpole  of  Houghton  had  been  outlawed  "  for  a 
supposed  treason  done  at  Kome,"  and  his  estates  forfeited  to  the  crown. 
It  is  evident  that  the  attention  of  the  Lord  Treasurer  had  been  drawn 
to  the  Walpoles  for  some  time  past.  There  are  several  of  Cecil's 
genealogical  and  heraldic  collections  among  the  Lambeth  MSS. 

8.  Page  210.  Tierney's  Dodd,  vol.  ii.  App.  ix.  No.  Ixii.  A  minute 
account  of  the  reception  of  Philip  II.  at  the  seminary  at  Valladolid  is  to 
be  met  with  in  a  scarce  volume,  entitled  Relacion  de  un  Sacerdote  Ingles 

.  .  de  la  venida  de  su  Magestad  a  Valladolid,  y  al  Colegio  de  los 
Ingleses  .  .  .  Traduzida  de    Ingles  en  Gastellano,  por   Tomas  Eclesal 

230 


ONE  GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE    221 

cavallero  Ingles. — (Madrid,  1592,  12mo.)  Orations  were  delivered  in  ten 
languages,  Hebreiv,  Welsh,  Gaelic,  and  Flemish  among  the  number. 
Prize  poems  were  composed,  some  of  them  of  very  respectable  merit, 
and  an  elaborate  pageant  was  carried  out  of  which  a  description  is  given. 
The  little  book  is,  in  fact,  precisely  like  a  modern  newspaper  report. 

9.  Page  211.  P.  R.  0.,  Domestic,  Elizabeth,  vol.  249,  No.  12,  where  the 
authority  for  all  that  is  contained  in  the  next  two  paragraphs  is  to 
be  found. 

10.  Page  215.  Yepez,  &c.  The  two  MS.  biographies  mentioned 
at  n.  3  supra. 

11.  Page  216.     Supra,  n.  9. 

12.  Page  219.      Cresswell's  Life,  p.  6 ;  Yepez,   p.  680,   and  the  MS 
Lives,  n.  3 ;  Walpole  Letters,  p.  47. 


CHAPTEE  IX. 

FATHER  Gerard's  *'  much  good." 

What  was  the  "  much  good  "  that  Father  Gerard  had  done 
in  Norfolk,  and  that  had  produced  so  profound  an  impression 
on  Henry  Walpole?  The  researches  suggested  by  this 
question  have  resulted  in  throwing  so  much  light  upon 
the  extent  of  Gerard's  influence  during  the  last  fifteen 
years  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  reign,  and  in  revealing  so  many 
curious  facts  bearing  upon  the  social  and  religious  history 
of  the  time,  that  I  believe  my  readers  will  be  in  a  better 
position  to  understand  the  real  significance  of  what  still 
remains  to  be  told  if  I  turn  away  once  more  from  the 
apparently  direct  course  of  my  narrative  and  give  some 
account  of  this  notable  Jesuit  Father's  sojourn  in  Norfolk. 
When  Gerard  dropped  down  from  the  high  road  to 
Norwich  on  that  memorable  afternoon  in  October  1588,  and 
determined  to  "  make  a  circuit  of  the  city  "  before  entering 
the  gates,  he  was  almost  certainly  within  sight  of  Eobert 
Southwell's  birthplace  at  St.  Faith's.^  Below  him,  on  the 
other  side  of  Hellesdon  bridge,  stretched  a  tract  of  country 
in  which  some  of  the  most  considerable  of  the  Norfolk 
landlords  whose  names  were  on  the  roll  of  Eecusants  were 
then  living.  To  his  right  were  the  woods  of  Cossey,  and 
the  hall  which  Sir  Henry  Jerningham  had  built  at  the 
beginning  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  and  where  ten  years  before 
the  time  we  have  now  arrived  at  Sir  Henry's  widow  had 
entertained  the  Queen  and  her  courtiers.  Scarcely  more 
than  two  miles  off  might  be  seen  the  new  chimneys  of 
Melton  Hall,  which  Eobert  Downes  had  very  recently 
erected.     And   another   mile   off',    and   nearer  to  Norwich, 

222 


ONE  GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE    223 

stood  Bowthorpe  Hall,  at  the  time  occupied  by  Lady 
Jerningham's  son-in-law,  Charles  Waldegrave,  Esq.,  who 
rented  the  house  from  Mr.  Yaxley,  a  member  of  one  of 
the  great  Suffolk  families.  Southwell's  residence  at  St. 
Faith's  has  now  quite  disappeared.  The  old  hall  at 
Bowthorpe  was  replaced  by  a  new  house  about  the  year 
1660,  when  the  property  passed  away  from  the  Yaxley 
family,  but  the  hall  at  Melton  still  stands,  and  so  does 
the  picturesque  old  hall  at  Cossey,  though  now  reduced 
to  insignificance  by  the  glorious  modern  mansion.^  Every 
one  of  these  county  squires  was  a  conscientious  Catholic, 
and  every  one  of  them  was  suffering  for  the  sake  of  his 
religion  at  the  time  that  Gerard  passed  by  on  his  way  to 
Norwich. 

The  Recusant  gentry  in  Norfolk  were  not  all  treated  with 
equal  severity :  a  great  deal  depended  upon  the  power  of 
a  man's  friends  in  high  quarters — not  that  the  Recusants 
ever  escaped  altogether  from  pains  and  penalties,  but  that 
the  laws  were  so  outrageously  tyrannical  that  they  did  not 
bear  being  carried  out  with  full  rigour  against  any  but  a 
minority,  upon  whom  extreme  measures  might  be  tried 
with  safety — with  this  minority  it  was  only  a  question  of 
time  when  they  would  find  themselves  stripped  of  their 
lands  and  turned  out  into  the  world  as  beggars.  Mr. 
Downes  of  Melton  was  a  notable  instance  of  this.  As  early 
as  the  year  1561  he  had  incurred  the  grave  displeasure  of 
the  Queen's  ministers  by  being  "  present  at  the  saying  of  a 
mass — since  masses  were  made  illegal."  The  mass  was 
said  at  the  house  of  Sir  Edward  Waldegrave  at  Borley 
in  Essex  ;  and  there  were  present  at  it  Sir  Edward  and 
Lady  Waldegrave  and  their  children,  Lady  Petre,  Lady 
Jerningham,  and  others  of  the  Catholic  party.  It  was  a 
matter  looked  upon  by  the  Government  of  the  day  with 
some  suspicion  and  alarm.  Scarcely  a  year  had  elapsed 
since  the  Act  of  the  1st  Elizabeth  had  been  passed,  which 
had  made  the  use  of  any  form  of  worship  except  such  as 
was  prescribed  by  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  illegal, 
whether  in  public  or  private ;  but,  as  I  have  before  said. 


224  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

the  mass  had  not  been  named  in  the  Act,  and  it  may  have 
been  that  some  were  in  doubt  as  to  the  legaUty  of  using 
the  old  form  of  worship,  and  this  meeting  at  Lady 
Waldegrave's  may  have  been  a  prearranged  one  in  order  to 
try  the  lawfulness  of  saying  mass  in  private.  If  this  were 
so,  the  plan  was  unwisely  conceived,  for  though  in  point  of 
fact  it  was  little  more  than  a  family  meeting,  it  certainly 
assumed  very  much  the  appearance  of  a  political  gathering.  3 
Sir  Edward  Waldegrave  had  been  one  of  Queen  Mary's 
privy  councillors,  and  was  Chancellor  of  the  Duchy  of 
Lancaster  ;  Sir  Henry  Jerningham  had  been  a  member 
of  the  Queen's  household  and  a  favourite  of  his  royal 
mistress ;  ^  and  Mr.  Eobert  Downes  appears  in  some  way 
to  have  been  connected  with  the  Waldegraves,  though  in 
exactly  what  relation  he  stood  to  them  I  have  as  yet 
failed  to  discover.  Little  or  no  secret  was  made  of  the 
matter,  and  it  at  once  came  to  the  ears  of  the  council. 
Forthwith  such  of  the  party  as  could  be  laid  hold  of  were 
arrested :  Sir  Edward  and  Lady  Waldegrave,  the  members 
of  their  household,  their  physician  Dr.  Fryer,  and  the  priests 
officiating,  in  all  about  a  dozen,  were  sent  to  the  Tower  ; 
others  were  apprehended  and  thrown  into  jail  at  Colchester, 
among  whom  Eobert  Downes's  name  is  conspicuous.s  This, 
as  far  as  I  know,  was  the  beginning  of  his  chequered  and 
unhappy  career.  How  long  he  was  detained  in  jail  on  this 
occasion  does  not  appear.  Sir  Edward  Waldegrave  was 
kept  long  enough  in  the  Tower  to  die  a  prisoner  there,  and 
Mr.  Downes  was  not  likely  to  have  been  released  before  his 
patron.^  He  was,  however,  probably  at  large  again  before 
the  summer  of  1563,  when  by  the  death  of  his  brother, 
Francis  Downes,  Esq.,  of  Sudbury,  he  succeeded  as  heir-at- 
law  to  extensive  estates  in  Suffolk,  Norfolk,  and  elsewhere, 
some  time  after  which  he  appears  to  have  taken  up  his 
residence  at  Great  Melton,  where  he  occupied  himself  in 
building  the  hall,  and  lived  in  a  style  befitting  his  large 
means.7 

For   some   unexplained   reason   Mr.  Downes   had  made 
himself  especially  obnoxious  to  the  Queen  or  her  ministers. 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  225 

The  Downes  were  a  very  numerous  clan  at  this  time 
in  Norfolk,  and  a  very  wealthy  one ;  there  was  another 
Eobert  Downes  at  the  other  end  of  the  county,  who  at 
the  beginning  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  reign  had  succeeded  his 
father  as  lord  of  the  manor  of  Bodney,  near  Watton,  and 
had  inherited  with  it  a  very  valuable  and  extensive  tract  of 
land,  where  he  too  kept  great  state  and  maintained  a  large 
household.^  Other  members  of  the  family  were  living  at 
various  houses  in  the  county,  and  almost  all  were 
conspicuous  for  their  stubborn  adherence  to  the  old  creed. 
But  though  Eobert  Downes  of  Bodney  was  left  com- 
paratively unmolested — i.e.,  he  had  to  **  compound"  for  his 
recusancy  and  pay  a  heavy  annual  contribution  for  the 
privilege  of  not  going  to  church — his  cousin  at  Melton  fared 
very  differently.  It  has  been  seen  that  on  the  occasion 
of  the  Queen's  visit  to  Norwich,  in  July  1578,  Mr.  Downes 
was  among  those  who  were  first  arrested.  From  that  time, 
for  at  least  twenty  years,  he  seems  to  have  been  kept  in 
prison  in  the  castle  of  Norwich,  allowed  at  intervals,  it  is 
true,  to  go  home  to  his  wife  and  children  on  giving  heavy 
bail  for  his  reappearance,  but  liable  to  be  summoned  to 
return  to  prison  at  any  moment  that  his  rents  fell  due  and 
the  time  of  payment  of  the  heavy  exactions  made  upon  him 
came  round,  and  never  allowed  to  wander  farther  than  five 
miles  from  his  own  hall.9  Year  by  year  he  became  more 
heavily  embarrassed;  his  Suffolk  property  seems  to  have 
gone  first,  then  the  lands  in  Kent  followed ;  at  last  his  life 
interest  in  the  larger  part  of  his  Melton  estate  was 
surrendered  to  the  Queen  in  1602,  the  consideration  for 
such  surrender  being  expressly  mentioned,  viz.,  that  he 
should  retain  his  dwelling-house  at  Melton  and  some  few 
score  of  acres  around  it,  and  enjoy  the  undisturbed 
possession  of  the  manor  of  Paunton  in  Herefordshire, 
"without  yielding,  paying,  or  rendering  any  annual  or 
yearly  rent  or  rents  ...  for  or  by  reason  of  his  Eecusancy, 
absence  from  Church  or  divine  service,  contrary  to  the  laws 
of  this  Eealm  in  that  behalf  made  and  provided."  ^° 
There  is  something  very  affecting  in  this  man's  history, 

15 


226  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

and  there  must  have  been  in  his  stubborn  and  immovable 
character  some  real  magnanimity  and  heroism  to  submit 
without  one  moment's  flinching  to  the  wearing  misery  of 
thirty  years  of  persecution  and  incessant  spoliation,  although 
by  a  single  act  of  conformity  he  might  have  freed  himself 
from  all  this  ruinous  weight  of  oppression. 

I  have  given  Mr.  Downes  as  an  instance  of  those  who  felt 
the  full  force  of  the  penal  laws  :  his  case  is  an  extreme  one, 
but  the  truth  is  that  only  those  of  the  Eecusant  gentry 
escaped  absolute  ruin  who  managed  to  obtain  some 
protection  from  friends  in  high  quarters.  Not  even  then 
were  they  altogether  spared,  and  as  surely  as  a  man  of  any 
substance  or  position  showed  any  active  sympathy  with  the 
Koman  creed  or  its  missionaries,  so  surely  did  he  feel  the 
weight  of  the  penal  laws :  all  the  power  and  influence  of  the 
Woodhouses  of  Kimberley  could  not  save  their  kinsman 
Francis  Woodhouse  from  dying  in  poverty  in  1605,  though 
at  the  beginning  of  Elizabeth's  reign  he  had  been  one  of 
the  most  considerable  squires  in  Norfolk,  and  in  1568  had 
built  the  noble  hall  at  Breccles,  which  still  stands  as  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  monuments  of  Elizabethan  domestic 
architecture  which  the  county  of  Norfolk  can  produce." 

So,  too,  it  fared  with  Edward  Yelverton :  as  long  as 
he  "made  no  sign"  he  might  escape  molestation  at  the 
expense  of  a  fixed  annual  charge  upon  his  estates,  but  all 
his  high  connections  could  not  keep  him  from  ruin  when 
once  he  became  suspected  of  connivance  with  the  move- 
ments and  designs  of  proselytisers.  He  too  found  himself 
being  stripped  of  his  estates  acre  by  acre,  till,  as  many 
another  of  his  Catholic  associates  did,  he  contrived  to  turn 
his  lands  into  money  before  the  spoilers  had  robbed  him  of 
all  he  possessed. ^2 

Three  years  before  Gerard  took  up  his  residence  with 
Mr.  Edward  Yelverton  at  Grimston,  his  half-brother,  Mr. 
Humphrey  Yelverton  of  Bawsie,  had  died,  leaving  behind 
him  a  widow  with  five  young  children,  three  sons  and  two 
daughters,  all  sufficiently  provided  for.  The  widow  seems 
to  have  removed  to  Lynn  at  the  death  of  her  husband, 


A    NORFOLK  HOUSE  227 


though  perhaps  keeping  up  the  house  at  Bawsie  and 
occasionally  residing  there.  Bawsie  is  about  four  miles 
from  Grimston,  and  Humphrey  Yelverton's  eldest  son 
Charles  must  have  been  a  frequent  visitor  at  the  house 
of  his  uncle  Edward  at  the  time  when  Gerard  was  a 
sojourner  there.'3  He  appears  always  to  have  been  a 
favourite  with  his  uncle,  spending  months  at  a  time  with 
him  after  the  death  of  his  mother  in  1591.  He  entered  at 
Caius  College  in  April  1590,  being  then  scarcely  fifteen 
years  old,  soon  became  one  of  the  suspect,  and  after  taking 
his  first  degree  the  early  leaven  began  to  work  and  give  him 
no  peace.  He  had  a  handsome  patrimony  which  would 
well  reward  an  informer  who  could  prove  him  to  be 
"popishly  inclined,"  and  he  appears  to  have  shown  some 
imprudence  in  habitually  associating  with  the  more 
conspicuous  of  the  Catholic  party.  When  the  time  came 
for  him  to  proceed  to  the  M.A.  degree  and  take  the  oath, 
he  left  Cambridge,  being  then  some  months  short  of  twenty 
one,  at  which  time  he  would  come  into  his  inheritance.  He 
had  no  sooner  gone  from  the  university  than  Eedman, 
Bishop  of  Norwich,  issued  a  warrant  for  his  apprehension, 
from  which,  however,  he  contrived  to  escape,  and  he  seems 
to  have  passed  the  next  year  or  two  in  doubling  from  house 
to  house  in  the  Eastern  Counties  like  a  hunted  hare,  till 
at  last  he  managed  to  get  to  Dover ;  here  he  was  arrested, 
when  actually  on  ship  board,  and  thrown  into  prison  for 
six  weeks.  He  contrived  to  escape  by  bribing  his  keepers, 
and  slipping  across  the  Channel  made  his  way  to  Eome, 
and  eventually  was  admitted  a  member  of  the  Society  of 
Jesus,  in  October  1601.^4 

Of  his  brother  Edward  we  know  but  little :  he  too 
entered  at  Cambridge,  and  was  in  residence  there  when 
Charles  Yelverton  left  the  university.  He  appears  never 
to  have  taken  a  degree,  but  at  the  end  of  Elizabeth's  reign 
he  is  described  as  "  a  Catholic,  and  domiciled  in  the  house- 
hold of  Lord  Morley/'  and  so,  by  the  privileges  which  the 
retainers  of  the  nobility  still  enjoyed,  protected  from 
molestation  on  account  of  his  creed. 


228  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


It  is  hardly  conceivable  that  these  two  young  men, 
who  were  near  relations  of  Mr.  Yelverton  and  in  constant 
communication  with  him  during  the  time  that  Father 
Gerard  was  his  guest,  were  not  directly  influenced  by  the 
zealous  "  missioner,"  and  the  more  so  as  Charles  Yelverton 
asserts  positively  that  his  father  had  died  a  Catholic,  that 
one  of  his  maternal  uncles  was  a  student  at  Douai  in  1601, 
and  that  his  maternal  grandfather,  Francis  Bastard  of 
Dunham,  was  then,  and  had  been  for  forty  years  past, 
true  to  the  old  creed. 

We  are  not,  however,  left  to  inference  and  conjecture 
with  regard  to  others  of  Gerard's  converts.  It  will  be 
remembered  that  John  Walpole,  Esq.,  of  Houghton,  had 
married  one  of  the  daughters  of  William  Calibut  of  Coxford 
Abbey,  who  at  the  close  of  his  life  took  up  his  residence 
at  Houghton,  where  he  died  in  1577.  Mr.  Calibut  had  two 
other  daughters :  one  of  them,  Ele,  had  married  Henry 
Kussell  of  West  Rudham — she  is  named  by  Mr.  Calibut 
in  his  will ;  the  third  daughter,  Anna,  married  first  a 
Cambridgeshire  gentleman,  Mr.  Thomas  Gardiner,  and  by 
him  had  a  family  of  four  children,  two  sons  and  two 
daughters.  He  must  have  died  a  year  or  two  after  the 
birth  of  Barclay,  or  Bernard,  his  second  son.  The  widow 
married  as  her  second  husband  Henry  Cornwallis  (brother 
of  Sir  Thomas  Cornwallis  of  Brome),  who  thereupon  settled 
at  Coxford.  A  second  family  was  the  fruit  of  this  marriage, 
of  whom  Eichard  Cornwallis  was  the  eldest  son.  He  was  a 
young  man  of  great  promise  and  ability ;  he  was  sent  to  the 
Grammar  School  at  Norwich  for  his  education,  and  in  his 
boyhood  imbibed  a  great  many  of  the  Puritan  notions  of  his 
teacher  Mr.  Limbert. 

From  Norwich  he  went  up  to  Cambridge,  where  he 
entered  at  Caius  College,  and  was  soon  elected  to  a  scholar- 
ship. In  the  list  of  those  proceeding  to  the  degree  of  B.A. 
in  1593  his  name  appears  second  in  order,  and  as  a  matter 
of  course  he  was  elected  to  a  fellowship,  took  his  M.A. 
degree,  and  continued  to  reside  at  the  university  for  some 
years  longer.     Meanwhile  he  must  have  been  backwards 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  229 

and  forwards  between  Cambridge  and  Norfolk,  and  in  the 
course  of  his  visits  home  he  came  under  Gerard's  influence. 
When,  exactly,  he  lost  his  mother  I  have  been  unable 
to  discover.  The  blood  of  a  rigid  Puritan  was  in  her 
veins,  and  as  she  had  lived  so  she  died.  But  his  father 
succumbed  to  Gerard's  persuasive  powers  and  was  "  recon- 
ciled," and  shortly  afterwards  Richard  Cornwallis  followed 
his  example,  and  became  a  marked  man  at  Cambridge. 
Henceforth  the  university  was  no  place  for  him.  He  was 
a  great  deal  too  conspicuous  a  personage  to  be  allowed 
to  live  in  quiet,  and  he  made  up  his  mind  to  cross  over 
to  the  Continent  and  to  visit  Rome.  He  succeeded  in 
getting  safely  to  the  other  side  of  the  Channel,  but  immedi- 
ately on  his  landing  at  Flushing  the  governor  arrested 
him,  and  after  keeping  him  in  prison  for  six  weeks  sent  him 
back  to  England,  where  he  was  formally  deprived  of  his 
fellowship  and  detained  in  prison  for  some  months.  How 
he  got  out  does  not  appear,  but  after  various  detentions 
and  difficulties  he  managed  again  to  slip  across  the  sea, 
and  in  process  of  time  presented  himself  at  the  English 
College  at  Rome  in  the  autumn  of  1598. ^s 

I  may  seem  to  have  rather  anticipated  the  course  of 
events  in  giving  the  story  of  these  young  men  ;  yet  it 
must  be  remembered  that  conversions  like  these  are  not 
wrought  in  a  day,  and  before  an  undergraduate  at  the 
university  brought  himself  to  make  the  immense  sacrifices 
which  were  implied  and  indeed  inevitable  when  he  became 
a  declared  and  avowed  Catholic  in  Elizabeth's  reign,  his 
mind  must  necessarily  have  gone  through  a  long  conflict 
and  great  revulsions  of  feeling.  It  was  a  slow  process ; 
and  who  could  exactly  trace  the  beginning  of  that  change 
which  ended  in  a  step  that  brought  with  it  the  severance 
of  the  strongest  earthly  ties  and  the  surrender  of  a  man's 
dearest  ambition  ?  Boys  of  twenty  take  a  leap  in  the  dark 
recklessly,  passionately ;  growm  men  in  their  prime  stand 
at  the  brink  and  hesitate  before  making  the  great  plunge ; 
and  though  Charles  Yelverton  was  hardly  of  age  when 
he  threw  up  his  prospects  at  Cambridge,  Mr.  Cornwallis 


230  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

was  a  man  of  thirty,  with  a  distinguished  position  in  the 
university,  a  career  before  him,  and  powerful  connections 
to  back  him  if  he  would  but  temporise  and  bide  his  time. 
It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  in  his  case  Gerard  had  a 
long  task  to  perform. 

It  was  otherwise  with  Mr.  Cornwallis's  half-brother 
Bernard  Gardiner  and  his  cousin  Edward  Walpole  of 
Houghton.  Between  these  two  young  men  there  existed 
a  strong  attachment,  and  both  were  ready  for  the  great 
venture  before  Gerrard  appeared  upon  the  scene.  Whether 
Gardiner  had  any  property  in  Norfolk  I  have  been  unable 
to  make  out,  but  his  mother  must  have  been  living  with 
her  second  husband  at  Coxford  while  Gerrard  was  in  the 
neighbourhood ;  and  his  sister  Katherine  had  married 
Thomas  Cromwell,  Esq.,  brother  of  Henry  Lord  Cromwell, 
on  the  17th  August,  1580,  and  was  now  living  at  North 
Elmham,  within  a  ride  of  Gerard's  headquarters.^^  For 
some  reason  Gardiner  was  regarded  with  suspicion  by  the 
Catholic  party.  There  may  have  been  some  indiscretion  on 
his  part,  or  it  may  have  been  that  the  puritanism  of  his 
mother  and  sister  gave  occasion  to  the  misgivings  that 
undoubtedly  were  in  existence  :  though  he  twice  offered 
himself  to  the  Society  of  Jesus,  he  was  on  both  occasions 
rejected  after  trial. '7 

Edward  Walpole  had  quite  made  up  his  mind,  and  was 
only  on  the  watch  for  an  opportunity  to  follow  his  cousin 
Henry  and  make  common  cause  with  him.  Gerard  simply 
tells  us  that  Edward  Walpole  "began  to  visit  him  and 
to  frequent  the  sacraments,"  and  "  thus  obtained  that 
vocation  which  he  followed  a  year  after,  when  he  went 
to  Eome."  Watson,  in  his  Quodlibets,  with  that  reckless- 
ness of  assertion  which  is  so  conspicuous  in  the  statements 
of  informers,  asserts  that  Gerard  gave  Edward  Walpole  the 
spiritual  exercises ;  though  had  he  done  so  he  is  not  likely 
to  have  omitted  to  mention  it.^^  Once  ''  reconciled"  there 
was  no  choice  left  to  Gardiner  and  Edward  Walpole  but 
to  leave  England,  which  could  not  afford  a  safe  home  to 
them  if   their   convictions  became   generally   known,   and 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  231 

it  only  remained  for  them  to  sell  such  property  as  they 
could  turn  into  money  and  make  provision  for  their  future 
maintenance  abroad.  Accordingly  Edward  Walpole  lost  no 
time  in  disposing  of  his  Tuddenham  estate.  His  cousin's 
widow  was  the  tenant  for  life  in  possession  of  the  property, 
and  at  this  time  can  hardly  have  been  more  than  forty  years 
of  age;  she  was  living  at  Tuddenham  in  35°  Eliz.  (1593),  and 
her  name  appears  in  the  subsidy  rolls  for  that  year  (-j^f) 
as  **  Mary  Walpole,  vid."  The  reversionary  interest,  under 
all  the  circumstances,  would  be  a  bad  purchase  for  most 
men,  and  the  sum  paid  would  in  all  probability  give  no 
return  for  thirty  years.  The  value  of  money  at  the  time 
may,  in  my  judgment,  be  roughly  estimated  at  ten  times 
what  it  is  at  the  present  day,  and  yet  Edward  Walpole's 
reversion  fetched  the  large  price  of  £500.  The  purchaser  was 
Edward  Yelverton.  The  deed  was  executed  and  quittance 
given  on  the  10th  July,  1590,  and  in  three  weeks'  time 
from  this  the  two  cousins  were  in  Belgium,  applying  to 
Henry  Walpole  for  letters  of  introduction  to  carry  them 
to  Eome.^9 

So  far  we  have  no  dijBficulty  in  tracing  the  direct  influence 
of  Gerard ;  and  if  the  limits  of  my  work  did  not  forbid 
my  passing  over  the  borders  of  the  county,  as  little 
difliculty  would  be  found  in  tracing  his  work  in  Suffolk, 
Essex,  and  elsewhere.  Nor  was  his  influence  limited  to 
the  circle  of  a  single  family,  or  to  the  connections  of  those 
who  first  harboured  him. 

Among  those  houses  of  the  Norfolk  gentry  at  which 
he  tells  us  he  was  a  frequent  visitor,  was  Bowthorpe  Hall 
one  ?  Was  some  of  the  relentless  persecution  which 
Robert  Downes  endured  to  be  attributed  to  information 
furnished  at  headquarters  that  Father  Gerard  had  been 
concealed  at  Melton?  How  was  it  that  at  Sandringham 
Hall  we  find  "  Mary  Cobb,  wife  of  WiUiam  Cobbe, 
Esq.,"  returned  as  an  "obstinate  Recusant"  two  or  three 
years  after  Gerard's  arrival,  though  before  then  the 
Cobbs  appear  all  to  have  conformed?  When  Mr. 
Bedingfield's  house  was  searched  in  1590,  had  some  spy 


232  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

discovered  that  Mr.  Yelverton  and  his  "  man  "  had  been 
there? ^°  Was  he  a  guest  at  Cossey  when  Mr.  Jerningham's 
two  sons  were  taken  from  him  and  put  under  the  care 
of  Mr.  Mulcaster,  to  be  "  rehgiously  brought  up"  at 
Westminster  (?)  School  and  allowed  but  rarely  to  visit  their 
parents  in  the  Norfolk  home  ?  ^^  How  soon  did  he  become 
a  guest  at  Kimberley  ?  How  often  did  he  come  and  go  ? 
How  long  did  he  stay  ?  To  all  these  questions  something 
like  an  answer  may  be  given. 

When  Sir  Henry  Jerningham  died,  in  September  1572, 
he  left  the  hall  at  Cossey  to  his  widow  for  life.  She 
continued  to  reside  there  till  her  death,  in  December  1583.^^ 
It  would  seem  that  her  son,  Henry  Jerningham,  Esq.,  took 
up  his  residence  in  the  meanwhile  at  Wingfield  Castle, 
while  her  ladyship  made  a  home  at  Cossey  for  her  daughter 
Jeronyma,  who  had  married  Charles  Waldegrave,  a  son 
of  Sir  Edward  Waldegrave  mentioned  above,  by  whom  she 
had  a  numerous  family.23  Shortly  before  Lady  Jerningham's 
death  she  had  been  reported  as  entertaining  in  her  house 
at  Cossey  a  popish  mass  priest,  one  Mr.  Pratt,  who  how- 
ever must  have  died  about  the  time  that  the  intelligence 
was  furnished,  for  I  find  that  he  was  buried  at  Cossey 
on  the  17th  April,  1582.^4  It  was  apparently  on  the  death 
of  Lady  Jerningham  that  Mr.  Waldegrave  removed  to 
Bowthorpe.  He  had  at  the  time  a  family  of  six  children — 
two  sons  and  four  daughters,  who  are  all  mentioned  in 
Lady  Jerningham's  will.  From  Edward,  the  eldest  son, 
the  present  Earl  of  Waldegrave  is  lineally  descended; 
Charles,  the  second  son,  was  a  child  of  three  when  his 
father  removed  from  Cossey,  and  a  boy  of  eight  when 
Gerard  passed  in  sight  of  the  house  on  his  way  to  Norwich. 
Mr.  Charles  Waldegrave,  though  a  Catholic  by  conviction, 
had  taken  the  oath  at  the  beginning  of  the  Queen's 
reign,  and  was  therefore  classed  by  the  Romanist  party, 
not  indeed  among  the  **  heretics"  but  among  the 
"  schismatics."  25  But  though  by  his  keeping  the  strict 
letter  of  the  law,  so  far  as  the  oath  was  concerned,  he 
had  managed  to  protect  himself  from   spoliation,  yet   his 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  233 

heart  was  with  the  old  faith  and  the  old  ritual.  As  to 
attendance  at  church,  by  this  time  a  very  simple  device 
had  been  invented  by  the  Catholic  squires,  which  has 
hitherto  escaped  the  notice  of  historians.  If  there  were 
no  church  to  go  to  in  the  parish,  the  squire  could  not 
be  presented  by  the  churchwardens  as  a  Non-conformist. 
It  was  easy  to  reduce  the  fabric  to  a  ruinous  condition 
in  any  out-of-the-way  village  where  the  lord  of  the  manor 
was  all  but  supreme,  where  he  was  resident  and  the  parson 
was  not;  accordingly,  a  systematic  destruction  of  the 
churches  in  Norfolk  commenced  and  went  on  to  an  extent 
that  may  well  amaze  us.  Foremost  among  these  was  the 
church  at  Bowthorpe.^^  It  was  inconvenient  to  have  a 
clergyman  of  the  new  school  coming  and  using  the  new 
Prayer  Book  and  reporting  absentees  at  the  bishop's  visita- 
tion, therefore  Mr.  Yaxley,  the  lord  of  the  manor,  "  con- 
verted [the  church]  to  a  barne,  and  the  steeple  to  a 
dove  house,"  and  Mr.  Waldegrave  could  no  more  be 
returned  as  "  not  keeping  his  church."  It  could  hardly 
be  expected,  however,  that  the  family  would  live  like 
heathens,  and  it  was  in  houses  of  this  kind  that  the 
missioners  found  an  eager  welcome.  Certain  it  is  that 
two  sons  of  Charles  Waldegrave — Charles,  who  was  born 
at  Cossey  in  1580,  and  John,  who  was  born  at  Bowthorpe 
about  ten  years  later — became  very  early  moved  to  make 
the  great  venture,  and  both  ended  by  abjuring  the  realm 
and  being  "reconciled"  to  the  Church  of  Rome.  Charles 
appears  to  have  been  received  into  the  Society  of  Jesus. 
John  was  ordained  some  time  in  1615.  Soon  after  he 
returned  to  England,  and  was  buried  at  Cossey,  3rd  March, 
1616-7.^7 

But  the  most  signal  instance  of  Gerard's  success  as  a 
proselytiser  is  to  be  found  in  the  conversion  of  Mr.  Yelver- 
ton's  sister  Grisel  and  her  husband  Sir  Philip  Wodehouse 
of  Kimberley.  Sir  Philip  had  succeeded  his  father  as  heir  to 
the  Kimberley  estate  some  months  before  Gerard's  arrival. 
He  was  one  of  the  most  considerable  personages  in  the 
county  of  Norfolk,  and  had  been  knighted  for  his  services 


234  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

under  Robert  Earl  of  Essex  in  the  Cadiz  voyage.  The 
Kimberley  Wodehouses  had  given  in  their  adhesion  to  the 
new  order  of  things,  had  accepted  the  oath  on  the  accession 
of  the  Queen,  and  were  in  high  favour  with  the  Govern- 
ment. A  cousin  of  Sir  PhiUp's,  Francis  Wodehouse  of 
Breccles  Hall,  was  indeed  a  conspicuous  Eecusant,  and  his 
wife  a  very  stubborn  and  consistent  one,  but  the  elder 
branch  of  the  family  had  never  incurred  the  least  suspicion  : 
the  Wodehouses  were  soldiers  and  courtiers  who  went  with 
the  times.  But  Lady  Wodehouse  had  been  for  some  time 
the  object  of  her  brother  Edward's  special  solicitude,  and 
before  Gerard  had  arrived  in  England  she  had  been  already 
influenced  by  the  arguments  which  had  been  put  forward. 
Among  other  houses  at  which  Gerard  was  received  as  a 
guest,  Kimberley  was  certainly  one,  and  I  must  leave  it  to 
himself  to  tell  the  story  of  his  doings  there. 

"  I  must  not  omit  mentioning  an  instance  of  the  wonder- 
ful efficacy  of  the  Sacraments  as  shown  in  the  case  of  the 
married  sister  of  my  host.  She  had  married  a  man  of  high 
rank,  and  being  favourably  inclined  to  the  Church,  she  had 
been  so  well  prepared  by  her  brother,  that  it  cost  me  but 
little  labour  to  make  her  a  child  of  the  Catholic  Church. 
After  her  conversion  she  endured  much  from  her  husband 
when  he  found  that  she  refused  to  join  in  heretical  worship, 
but  her  patience  withstood  and  overcame  all.  It  happened 
on  one  occasion  that  she  was  so  exhausted  after  a  difficult 
and  dangerous  labour,  that  her  life  was  despaired  of.  A 
clever  physician  was  at  once  brought  from  Cambridge,  who 
on  seeing  her  said  that  he  could  indeed  give  her  medicine, 
but  that  he  could  give  no  hopes  of  her  recovery  ;  and  having 
prescribed  some  remedies,  he  left.  I  was  at  that  time  on  a 
visit  to  the  house,  having  come,  as  was  my  wont,  in  com- 
pany with  her  brother.  The  master  of  the  house  was  glad 
to  see  us,  although  he  well  knew  we  were  Catholics,  and 
used  in  fact  to  dispute  with  me  on  religious  subjects.  I 
had  nearly  convinced  his  understanding  and  judgment,  but 
the  will  was  rooted  to  the  earth,  '  for  he  had  great  pos- 
sessions.'    But  being  anxious  for  his  wife  whom  he  dearly 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  235 

loved,  he  allowed  his  brother  to  persuade  him,  as  there  was 
no  longer  any  hope  for  her  present  life,  to  allow  her  all 
freedom  to  prepare  for  the  one  to  come.  With  his  per- 
mission then  we  promised  to  bring  in  an  old  Priest  on  the 
following  night  :  for  those  Priests  who  were  ordained  before 
Elizabeth's  reign  were  not  exposed  to  such  dangers  and 
penalties  as  the  others.  We  therefore  made  use  of  his 
ministry,  in  order  that  this  lady  might  receive  all  the  rites 
of  the  Church.  Having  made  her  confession  and  been 
anointed,  she  received  the  Holy  Viaticum ;  and  behold  in 
half  an  hour's  time  she  so  far  recovered  as  to  be  wholly  out 
of  danger  ;  the  disease  and  its  cause  had  vanished,  and  she 
had  only  to  recover  her  strength.  The  husband,  seeing  his 
wife  thus  snatched  from  the  jaws  of  death,  wished  to  know 
the  reason.  We  told  him  that  it  was  one  of  the  effects  of 
the  holy  sacrament  of  Extreme  Unction,  that  it  restored 
bodily  health  when  Divine  Wisdom  foresaw  that  it  was 
expedient  for,  the  good  of  the  soul.  This  was  the  cause  of 
his  conversion  ;  for,  admiring  the  power  and  efl&cacy  of  the 
Sacraments  of  the  true  Church,  he  allowed  himself  to  be 
persuaded  to  seek  in  that  Church  the  health  of  his  own 
soul.  I  being  eager  to  strike  the  iron  while  it  was  hot, 
began  without  delay  to  prepare  him  for  confession  ;  but 
not  wishing  just  then  that  he  should  know  me  for  a 
Priest,  I  said  that  I  would  instruct  him  as  I  had  been 
instructed  by  Priests  in  my  time.  He  prepared  himself, 
and  awaited  the  Priest's  arrival.  His  brother-in-law  told 
him  that  this  must  be  at  night  time.  So,  having  sent  away 
the  servants  who  used  to  attend  him  to  his  chamber,  he 
went  into  the  library,  where  I  left  him  praying,  telling  him 
that  I  would  return  directly  with  ithe  Priest.  I  went  down 
stairs  and  put  on  my  soutane,  and  returned  so  changed 
in  appearance,  that  he,  never  dreaming  of  any  such  thing, 
was  speechless  with  amazement.  My  friend  and  I  showed 
him  that  our  conduct  was  necessary,  not  so  much  in  order 
to  avoid  danger,  but  in  order  to  cheat  the  devil  and  to 
snatch  souls  from  his  clutches.  He  well  knew,  I  said, 
that  I  could  in  no  other  way  have  conversed  with  him  and 


236  ONE   GENERATION  Ob 

his  equals,  and  without  conversation  it  was  impossible  to 
bring  round  those  who  were  so  ill-disposed.  The  same 
considerations  served  to  dispel  all  anxieties  as  to  the 
consequences  of  my  sojourn  under  his  roof.  I  appealed 
to  his  own  experience,  and  reminded  him,  that  though  I 
had  been  in  continual  contact  with  him,  he  had  not  once 
suspected  my  priestly  character.  He  thus  became  a 
Catholic  ;  and  his  lady,  grateful  to  God  for  this  twofold 
blessing,  perseveres  still  in  the  Faith,  and  has  endured 
much  since  that  time  from  the  hands  of  heretics."  ^^ 

It  will  be  noticed  that  Gerard  in  this  account,  though 
he  speaks  of  Lady  Wodehouse  as  still  "persevering  in 
the  faith,"  leaves  it  to  be  inferred  that  her  husband's 
conversion  had  not  been  as  complete  as  he  had  at  first 
assumed  it  to  be.  Eecent  discoveries  in  the  archives  at 
Eome,  and  elsewhere,  have  furnished  us  with  some  very 
curious  corroborations  of  Gerard's  story.  Gerard  wrote  his 
recollections  shortly  after  his  return  to  the  Continent,  about 
the  year  1606.  Good  as  his  memory  appears  to  have  been, 
he  was  writing  of  what  had  occurred  fifteen  or  sixteen  years 
before  ;  and  there  is  reason  for  believing  that  during  the 
last  five  or  six  years  of  his  stay  in  England  his  connection 
with  Norfolk  had  been,  if  not  wholly  broken  off,  yet  very 
much  less  intimate  than  before.  He  knew  that  Sir  Philip 
Wodehouse  had,  as  he  would  have  expressed  it,  "  fallen 
back  into  heresy  "  ;  he  had  not  heard  that  Lady  Wodehouse 
had  been  prevailed  on  to  do  the  same.  But  when  Charles 
Yelverton  wrote  his  account  of  himself  in  the  books  of 
the  Eoman  College  in  1601,  he  had  already  a  different 
tale  to  tell.  His  aunt  Jane  Lumner  was  still  a  strict 
Catholic,  but  he  says  the  other  sister  of  his  father,  "  wife 
of  Sir  Philip  Wodehouse,  knight  ...  on  account  of  the 
madness  of  her  husband,  which  very  frequently  broke  out 
against  her,  has  lately  fallen  from  the  Church."  ^9  It  is 
plain,  however,  from  another  of  those  scraps  of  evidence 
which,  as  belonging  to  the  class  of  "undesigned  coinci- 
dences," are  specially  valuable,  that  for  a  time  at  any  rate 
Sir  Philip  must  have  had  strong  leanings  in  the  direction  of 


A   NORFOLK   HOUSE  237 

the  Roman  ritual,  and  that  he  did  something  more  than 
merely  connive  at  the  religious  practices  of  his  wife  and 
her  relations.  In  the  year  1608  one  James  Roper,  a 
Suffolk  gentleman  of  good  connections,  who  had  spent 
some  years  at  Cambridge,  writes  his  account  of  himself  in 
the  same  books  of  the  Roman  college  to  which  I  have 
already  had  occasion  to  refer,  and  among  other  particulars 
of  his  previous  life  tells  us  that  after  leaving  the  university 
he  had  (apparently  in  the  capacity  of  private  tutor)  "  lived 
with  Sir  Philip  Wodehouse,  Knt.,  in  the  county  of  Norfolk, 
where,"  he  adds,  ''  thanks  be  to  God  I  became  a  Catholic  .  .  . 
by  the  exertions  and  conversations  of  Edward  Yelverton, 
Esq.,  and  of  Lady  Woodhouse,  mother  of  Sir  Thomas 
Woodhouse,  Knt.  .  .  .  "  ;  this  was  about  the  year  1602. 
These  traces  of  Gerard's  activity  and  extraordinary 
success  are  but  stray  gleanings  which  have  been  gathered 
in  the  course  of  a  few  years  of  research,  and  it  must  be 
remembered  that  I  have  studiously  resisted  the  temptation 
of  pursuing  my  inquiries  over  the  borders  of  the  county 
of  Norfolk,  but  I  suspect  it  would  require  only  a  careful 
scrutiny  of  letters  and  papers  still  existing  to  disclose 
information  even  more  startling.  When  Gerard  tells  us 
that  he  reconciled  in  Norfolk  "  more  than  twenty  fathers 
and  mothers  of  families,"  whose  names  "for  prudence 
sake "  he  had  omitted,  he  evidently  has  not  one  whit 
overstated  his  remarkable  success,  and  evidently  too  this 
was  but  the  beginning  of  his  labours. 3°  But  how  prodigious 
must  have  been  the  effect  upon  Henry  Walpole's  imagina- 
tion and  feelings,  when  letter  after  letter  arrived  from  home 
bringing  with  it  always  some  new  tidings  of  converts  made 
and  waverers  "reconciled,"  and  all  this,  too,  among  his 
own  friends  and  kinsfolk  and  schoolfellows !  Was  this 
great  stirring  only  the  beginning  of  the  harvest  ?  How 
grand  the  ingathering  would  be  when  he  who  had  been  the 
first  to  give  up  all  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven's  sake  should 
take  up  the  work  where  Gerard  left  it,  and  carry  it  on  ! 
High  hopes,  indeed,  if  such  were  his !  Destined  to  be 
dispelled  only  too  soon. 


NOTES   TO   CHAPTEE   IX. 

1  Page  222.  Richard  Southwell,  Esq.,  had  been  compelled  to  sell  hia 
property  at  St.  Faith's  in  the  very  year  that  Father  Gerard  arrived  in 
England.  He  was  heavily  in  debt,  and  in  1589  I  find  him  in  the  Fleet 
at  the  suit  of  Henry  Doyle,  Esq.,  and  one  of  the  Townsends,  and 
appealing  to  the  Privy  Council  for  relief.  His  affairs  were  evidently  in  a 
hopeless  state  of  embarrassment.  He  appears  to  have  died  in  the  Fleet 
at  last. — Bloomfield's  Norfolk,  x.  441 ;  Records  of  the  Privy  Council,  6th 
and  7th  July,  1589. 

2.  Page  223.  The  old  hall  at  Cossey  bears  upon  it  the  date  1564.  Sir 
Henby  Jernegan  was  buried  at  Cossey  30th  September,  1572  (P.  R.). 
His  will  is  in  P.  C.  C. ;  it  was  dated  15th  August,  1572,  and  was  proved 
27th  May,  1573.  His  widow  survived  him  eleven  years,  and  was  buried 
23rd  December,  1583  (P.  R.). 

3.  Page  224.  See  Froude,  vol.  vii.  p.  339  ;  Calender,  P.  R.  0.,  Domestic, 
1547-80,  pp.  173,  176,  179  ;  Addenda,  1547-65,  Nos.  7,  8,  9,  &c. 

4.  Page  224.  He  was  .Vice-Chamberlain  to  Queen  Mary  in  1556, 
and  made  Master  of  the  Horse  in  1557  ;  his  name  occurs  frequently  in  the 
Queen's  Household  Accounts. — See  Privy  Purse  Expenses  of  the  Princess 
Mary,  edited  by  Sir  Fred.  Madden,  London,  8vo,  1831. 

5.  Page  224.     Addenda,  Domestic,  P.  R.  0.,  1547-65,  vol.  xi.  No.  8. 

6.  Page  224.  Sir  Edward  Waldegrave  died  in  the  Tower  1st 
September,  1561.  His  p.m.  inquisition  was  taken  at  Brentwood  21st 
January,  1562.  His  will,  dated  13th  September,  1559,  was  proved  13th 
September,  1561.— P.  C.  C,  "  Loftes,"  29. 

7.  Page  224.  The  will  of  Francis  Downes,  of  Lincoln's  Inn 
Fields,  Esq.,  is  to  be  found  in  P.  C.  C,  Reg.  Stevenson,  f .  3  ;  it  is  dated 
5th  July,  1563,  and  was  proved  3rd  February,  1563-4,  by  Robert  Downes, 
testator's  brother  and  executor.  Among  other  legacies  he  leaves  "to 
the  Lady  Frances  Waldegrave  20  of  my  best  oaks  in  Goldingham  Wood 
in  Bulmer,  co.  Essex  and  my  crucifix  of  gold." 

238 


ONE  GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE    239 

8.  Page  225.  Robert  DowNi'^.r  of  Bodney  succeeded  his  father,  Jamer 
DowNEs  of  Lanoford,  Esq.,  1st  February,  1  Queen  Mary  (p.m.  inq. 
Chancery,  4  and  5  Philip  and  Mary,  pt.  3,  No.  17).  His  name  appears 
regularly  upon  the  Recusant  Rolls  up  to  the  time  of  his  death,  9  Oct. 
1594  (p.m.  inq.  Chancery,  37  Elizabeth,  pt.  2,  No.  67),  after  which  his 
widow  and  her  children  are  as  regularly  among  the  "presented"  at 
the  Bishop's  Visitations. 

9.  Pa(]C  225.     Take  the  following  as  a  sample : — 


"  William  Yaxley,  ar. 
HuMPHR.  Bedingfield,  ar. 
Robert  Downes,  ar. 
Robert  Lovell,  ar. 
Robert  Gray,  ar. 


To  be  kept  in  jail  till  they  have  paid  the 
whole  sums  of  money  whereof  they  have 
been  before  convicted  as  also  the  sums 
whereof  they  be  convicted  at  these 
Assizes  upon  the  Statute  from  the  viii'^^ 
of  July  to  the  last  of  March,  viz.,  ix 
months." 


Sessions  Book,  among  the  Records  of  the  Clerk  of  the  Peace  for  the 

County  of  Norfolk,  7th  April,  26th  Elizabeth. 

In  the  Recusant  Roll  of  the  34th  Elizabeth,  Robert  Downes  of  Melton 

appears  as  owing  £1,690  16s.  l^d.  for  his  Recusancy  !     In  September 

1598  he  is   returned  as  still  in    jail  at    Norwich,  while  his   wife   and 

daughter  are  living  at  Melton. 

10.  Page  225.  Patent  Roll,  44th  Elizabeth  (13  Nov.),  part  x.  The 
poor  man  died  on  the  6th  of  February,  7  James  I.  (1610). — P.  m.  inq. 
Court  of  Wards,  bundle  60,  No.  273. 

11.  Page  226.  Francis  Woodhouse  of  Breccles  was  son  and  heir  of 
John  Woodhouse  of  Breccles  by  Anne,  relict  of  William  Sayve  of 
Mundford,  Gent.,  and  sister  of  Francis  Spylman  of  Stow  Bedon,  Gent. 
He  was  nephew  of  Sir  Roger  Woodhouse  of  Kimberley,  Knt.,  whose 
will  was  proved  at  Norwich  15th  February,  1560-1.  He  married  (1) 
Margaret  Repps  of  St.  Stephen's,  Norwich,  and  (2)  Eleanor.  .  .  .  He 
was  buried  at  Cawston  24th  March,  1604-5,  leaving  behind  him  a  son 
John,  who  was  under  age  at  his  father's  death.  Francis  Woodhouse 
was  for  the  last  twenty  years  of  his  life  at  least  a  Recusant,  and  his 
wife,  with  her  son  "John  Woodhouse,  gent.,"  are  returned  as 
"obstinate  Recusants"  in  1615.  He  seems  to  have  sold  the  Breccles 
estate  to  Sir  Robert  Gardiner  about  1599,  and  his  wife  appears  to  have 
parted  with  the  rest  of  the  landed  property  shortly  after  her  husband's 
decease,  for  in  1607  she  is  described  as   "  nuper  de  Caston." 

12.  Page  226.  On  Edward  Yelverton,  see  pp.  138,  139,  s^ipra.  His 
will  is  in  the  Registry  at  Norwich.     The  original  will  alone   is  now 


240  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

producible,  the  office  copy  which  formerly  was  to  be  found  in  a  volume 
named  Lawson  having  disappeared.  It  is  dated  7th  May,  1623,  and  was 
proved  at  Norwich  2nd  October  of  the  same  year,  by  the  executors, 
William  and  John  Paston.  He  calls  himself  in  this  will  ' '  Edwakd 
Yelverton  of  Appleton  in  the  county  of  Norfolk,  Gent." 

13.  Page  227.  The  will  of  .Humphrey  Yelverton  "of  King's  Lynn 
in  the  county  of  Norfolk,  Gent.,"  is  dated  16  May,  1585,  and  was 
proved  8th  November,  1585.  In  it  he  names  his  five  children,  Charles, 
Edward,  Humphrey,  Martha,  and  Ann  (P.  C.  C,  Brudenell,  48).  His 
wife's  will  is  dated  2nd  March,  1589-90  (P.  C.  C. ,  Samherhe,  20).  By  this 
it  appears  that  only  three  out  of  the  five  children  were  then  alive,  viz., 
Charles,  Edward,  and  Martha.  She  leaves  the  guardianship  of  her  son 
Charles  to  her  brother  Henry  Bastard;  of  Edward  to  her  brother 
Edward  Bastard  ;  of  Martha  to  her  uncle  Eichard  Bastard  of  Great 
Dunham,  Gent.  Administration  was  granted  to  her  brother  Henry 
Bastard  17th  March,  1590-1. 

14.  Page  227.  "Carolus  Yelverton  filius  Humfredi  Yelverton 
generosi  ex  oppido  Bausie  in  Com.  Norff.  oriundus  puer  annorum  15- 
Adm.  26  April,  1590."  {Caius  Coll.  Matriculation  Book.)  He  appears 
to  have  been  a  scholar  of  the  college.  He  took  the  B.A.  degree  in  1593. 
(MS.  Cat.  in  the  Registry,  Cambridge.)  He  was  admitted  an  alumnus 
at  the  English  College  at  Eome  15th  October,  1601.  See  further, 
concerning  him  and  his  family,  Records  of  the  English  Province^  S.J., 
series  I.  pp.  142-6.     Burns  &  Gates,  8vo,  1877. 

15.  Page  229.  For  the  Gardiner  descent  see  Original  Papers  of 
the  Norfolk  and  Norwich  Archceological  Society,  Visitation  of  Norfolk, 
p.  342.  It  will  be  noticed  that  Le  Neve,  in  giving  the  name  Barkley, 
adds,  "now  called  Bartholomeiv.^^  I  have  no  doubt  whatever  that 
this  is  a  mistake  for  Bernard,  It  was  a  common  practice  at  this 
time  among  the  Catholics  to  adopt  a  change  of  name.  Blomefield, 
always  unfortunate  in  his  genealogies,  is  more  than  usually  inaccurate 
in  his  account  of  the  Coxford  Calibuts.  {History  of  Norfolk,  vii.  p.  155.) 
Richard  Cornwallis  mentions  his  tivo  half-brothers,  sons  of  his  mother, 
one  of  whom  he  says  "  exercises  the  priestly  functions  in  England." 
This  is  Bernard  Gardiner,  who  returned  to  England  about  the  year 
1599;  the  other  is  the  Humphrey  Gardiner  of  the  Norfolk  Visitation. 

In  the  Bishop's  Registry  at  Norwich  evidence  of  the  second  marriage 
is  still  to  be  seen, 

"1567  [-8]  4  Februarii  Licentia  Matrimonialis  inter  Mrm.  Henricum 
CoRNWALLYS  gen5s  :  et  Annam  Gardiner  de  Estrudham  .  .  .  cuicunque 
Curatori." 

Henry  Cornwallis,  the  father,  lived  only  a  few  months  after  his  son 
Richard  had  "abjured  the  realm."    He  made  his  will  4th  January, 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  241 


1598-9.  In  it,  after  leaving  his  sen  Eichard  a  legacy  in  money  ''towards 
his  furnishing  with  hook&  and  apparel,"  he  bequeaths  him  certain  house- 
hold effects,  adding,  "All  which  parcells  my  desire  is  shall  remain  still  at 
Brome  until  my  said  son  Richard  shall  come  thither  for  them.^^  He  never 
did  come  for  them.  In  the  course  of  his  wanderings  (after  being 
ordained  priest  '5th  June,  1599)  he  took  refuge  with  his  cousin,  Sir 
Chakles  Cornwallis,  who  was  the  English  Ambassador  at  the  Court  of 
Spain.  Sir  Charles  icalls  him  "  a  younger  son  to  my  dearest  uncle 
Henry  Cornwallis, ^deceased.  ..."  He  adds,  "He  hath  a  long  time 
entertained  the  Eeligion  that  suits  best  with  this  country,  although  he 
had  a  mother  very  earnestly  affected  to  the  contrary.''  This  was  in 
September  1606.  Two  months  after  this.  Sir  Charles,  writing  to  Lord 
Salisbury,  tells  him  that  his  cousin  had  lately  died  at  the  embassy 
during  his  own  absence. — Winwood's  Memorials,  vol.  ii.  pp.  260,  278. 

The  following  is  Richard  Cornwallis's  account  of  himself  (Ex  Archivis 
Coll.  Angl.  Romce,  Scrit.  Scholar,  No.  8,  pt.  i.  vol.  xxiv.     Rolls  MSS.)  :— 

Richardus  Cornwallys,  30  Nov.  1598. 

1°  Resp.  Nomen  mihi  Rich.  Cornwaleys  annum  agens  30"'.  Natus 
apud  Monasterium  Coxfordiense  in  Norfolc.  Transacta  in  paterna 
domo  estate  puerili,  Nordovicum  concessi  rudimentis  Grammaticis  in 
Schola  Publica  imbuendus. 

2°  Resp.  Pater  mihi  est  Henricus  Cornwaleys,  Armiger,  non  multo 
abhinc  tempore,  Dei  benignitate,  EcclesisB  Catholicas  restitutus.  Mater 
Anna  Calibut  oriunda  ex  antiqua  satis  familia,  sed  jam  emortua  ac 
penitus  extincta,  qusB  et  ipsa  non  ita  pridem  supremum  diem  obiit. 
Fratrem  habeo  natu  minorem  et  sorores  germanas  binas,  totidemque 
fratres  uterinos,  quorum  alter  sacerdotali  munere  in  Anglia  fungitur.  E 
consanguineis  eminet  praecaeteris  Thomas  Cornwaleys,  Miles  et 
Catholicus,  GuLrELMUs  Cornwaleys,  Eques  auratus  .  .  .  et  Carolus  ejus 
frater  non  Catholici. 

3°  Resp.  Cantabrigiee  in  Collegio  Gunville  et  Caii  decern  plus  minus 
annos  moratus.   .  .  . 

5  Resp.  Ab  infantia  hasretica  pravitate  institutus  .  .  .  donee  Pater 
misericordiarum  .  .  .  tribus  abhinc  annis  in  gremium  sponsse  suae  me 
suscipere  dignatus  est,  usus  prcecipue  opera  ministeriis  dicti  fratris  Sacer- 
dotis  et  Patris  Gerardi  ex  Soc.  Jesu.  Ecclesiaa  Catholicaa  reconciliatus 
et  Romam  cogitans  cum  Flussinghas  appulissem  Gubernator  reginaa,  me 
deprehensum  per  sex  septimanas  in  custodia  detinuit ;  demum  remissum 
in  Angliam,  et  Sodalitio  ut  vocant  (quod  in  Collegio  obtinueram)  exutum, 
iterum  per  sex  alias  septimanas  carceri  tradiderunt.  .   .  . 

16.  Page  230.  *•  1580,  Thomas  Cromwell,  Esq""*. ,  and  M"  Katharine 
Gardyner  were  married  ye  xvii^^  daye  of  August."  (P.  R.,  North 
Elmham.)  Five  children  of  this  marriage  are  registered  among  the 
baptized  at  North  Elmham,  the  last,  Lyonell,  8th  January,  1591-2. 

16 


242  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

17.  Tage  230.  On  his  first  attempt,  see  supra,  c.  vii.  n.  9,  p.  199- 
Seven  years  after  this  he  tried  again ;  for  in  Father  Greene's  Collect., 
p.  206  {Stonyhurst  MSS.),  I  find,  among  the  names  of  those  admitted 
"in  domo  probat'^  S.  Andree  ab  anno  1590,  usque  ad  1600,"  "1597, 
P.  Bernardinus  [aetat]  34,  Ex.  Coll.  Angl. ,  Dimissus  ex  Novitiatu, 
1598." 

18.  Page  230.  Watson's  Quodlibets,  p.  91 ;  Gerard's  Autobio- 
graphy, U.S. 

19.  Page  230.  P.  R.  O.,  Close  Rolls,  32°  Eliz.,  pt.  26.  Edward 
Yelvebton  did  not  come  into  the  Tuddenham  estate  till  1614,  when 
I  find  him  living  there  and  returned  as  a  Popish  Recusant  among  the 
presentations  at  the  Bishop's  Visitation  {Ep.  Beg.  Norioic). 

In  a  case  drawn  up  for  the  opinion  of  Sir  Matthew  Hale  in  1653  (penes 
me)  1  find  it  stated  that  Mary,  widow  of  Edward  Walpole  of  Tudden- 
ham, married  a  certain  John  Beadle,  but  I  have  been  quite  baffled  in 
my  attempt  to  find  anything  about  him,  or  when  or  where  he  or  his 
wife  died. 

Bernard  Gardiner  and  Edward  Walpole  arrived  in  Belgium  in 
August  1590.     {Walpole  Letters,  p.  11.) 

20.  Page  232.  For  the  search  at  Bedingfield's  house  and  the 
anonymous  letter  which  led  to  it,  see  Cal.  State  Papers,  Domestic,  Eliz., 
1581,  1590,  p.  648,  No.  76. 

In  "  A  trewe  Certificat  of  Popishe  recusants  within  ye  Dyoces  of 
Norwich  .  .  .  detected  by  inquisition,  made  ye  first  of  December 
1595  ..."  I  find  the  following  entry  showing  that  Father  Gerard 
was  at  this  time  in  Norfolk,  "...  Woolverton.  Edward  Yelverton* 
Gent.,  kepith  a  small  howse,  Robt.  Thompson  his  man." 

Thompson  loas  the  name  which  Gerard  assumed  and  generally  icent 
by  while  in  Norfolk. 

21.  Page  232.  In  a  letter  among  the  archives  at  Hatfield,  from 
a  spy  named  John  Byrde,  dated  27th  August,  1601,  and  addressed  to 
Cecil,  the  writer,  who  bargains  for  £100  to  betray  Father  Gerard, 
says  among  other  things  "...  which  said  Gerard's  abidings  are 
.  .  .  sometimes  (as  it  is  said)  at  St.  John's  with  Mr.  Jerningham." 

The  following  is  from  the  MSS.  at  Cossey : — 
To  our  Lovenge  Friende  Henrye  Jerninghame,  Esq. 

After  our  hearty  commendations,  &c. 

Whereas  upon  humble  Suit  made  unto  us  bye  you.  That  your  two 
Sons  remaineng  with  Mr.  Molcastor,  might  during  the  time  of  the 
Infection  bee  sent  to  remain  with  you  for  one  Season.  We  accordingly 
have  directed  That  uppon  your  sending  for  them,  Mr.  Molcastor  shall 
send  them  unto  you,  to  remain  and  be  kept  with  you  untill  All  hallowstide 
next.    For  as  much  as  you  now  again  doe  desire  (all  though  God  bee 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  243 

thanked  the  Sickness  doth  decrease  in  the  City)  that  your  said 
Children  may  for  some  longer  space  of  time  remaine  in  the  Country  with 
you,  till  the] Infection  be  more  slacked  in  the  City.  We  are  contented 
to  yield  to  your  request,  so  as  your  said  Sons  may  bee  delivered  again  to 
Mr.  Molcastor's  charge  bye  Twelve  tide  next,  to  remain  with  him  for 
their  Education  as  before,  the  which  requiring  you  to  see  accordingly 
performed,  we  bid  you  farewell. 
From  the  Court  at  Whitehall  the  26  of  October  1593. 

Your  Loving  Friends, 

Howard. 
Wee  doe  look  that  in  the  mean  time  your  Children  bee  brought  up 
&  instructed  bye  a  Schoolmaster  known  to  be  well  affected  to  Religion 
that  may  give  accompt  for  theer  Education,  &c. 

Hunsdon.  Jo.  Fortescue. 

Wm.  Cobham.  T.  Buckhurst. 

R.  Cecil.  J.  Wolley. 

The  Mr.  Molcastor  here  mentioned  is  Richard  Mulcaster,  writer  of 
Positions  loherein  those  Primitive  Circumstances  he  examined  which  are 
necessary  for  the  Training  np  of  Children,  either  for  Skill  in  their  Booke, 
or  Health  within  their  Bodie.     4to,  1581.     [Very  scarce.] 

22.  Page  232.  Sir  Henry's  will  was  proved  in  P.  C.  C,  17th 
September,  1577.  He  was  buried  at  Cosseyi30th  September,  1572  (P.R,). 
I  cannot  account  for  the  interval  that  elapsed  between  his  death  and 
the  proving  his  will.  Lady  Jerningham  was  buried  at  Cossey  (P.  R.) 
23rd  December,  1583.  Her  will,  interesting  in  many  ways,  is  especially 
so  for  the  mention  of  her  Fool.  This  is  the  latest  instance  that  I  have 
met  with  of   a   Fool  being  kept  as  a  regular  member  of  the   household. 

"In  dei  nomine  Amen.  The  Twentith  day  of  Auguste,"  24th  Eliz., 
"  I  Fraunces  Jernegan  of  Cossey  in  the  Countie  of  Norff.,  widdowe," — 
to  be  buried  "  where  the  body  of  my  late  husband  Henry  Jernegan,  Knighte 
[whose  soule  god  pdon]  is  buried  or  shall  hereafter  be  transposed ; " — £40, 
amongst  other  charitable  bequests,  to  be  distributed  "  among  the  poore 
prisonners  in  London  by  my  Exor  withe  the  advise  and  consente  of 
my  Sonne  Charles  Waldegrave,  Esquire,  [and  John  Derehm,  my  Survey- 
ors ; — s<i  Exor  also  (if  the  same  be  not  donne  by  mee  in  my  Liefe  tyme 
to  cause  some  decent  Toombe  to  be  made  or  ells  some  convenient  stone 
of  marble  to  be  laid  on  the  grave  of  my  Layde  Kingston  his  Grandmother, 
whoe  lyeth  buried  in  the  parishe  Churche  of  Layton  in  the  Countie  of 
Essex ;  "  *  *  *  to  the  next  heir  of  William  Sterer  sometyme  possessor 
of  the  scite  of  my  Manno"^  of  Feales  in  Fressingfeilde,  £20 ; — 100  marks 
to  M"^  Derehm  for  the  aunsweringe  of  the  Debtes  of  S"^  Anthony  Kingston  ; 
— to  my  Daughter  Waldegrave  my  Pomander  of  golde  ynamyled,"  (frc, 
&c.,  for  life,  rem"^  to  Fraunces  W,  her  dau"" ; — "  Alsoe  I  give  unto  her 
[s'^  dau"^  W.]  my  graye  nagge,  and  to  her  husband  a  horse,  either  the 
graye  or  the  baye,  w<^^   my  Sonne  Jernegan  shall  thinke  best ;  also  to 


244  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

Edward  Waldegrave  his  sonne,  to   Charles  W.  his  seconde  Sonne,   to 
Fraunces  W.  his  daughter,  to  Magdalen  and  Dorothie^W.,  and  to  Christian 
W. ,  .  .  . — to  Henry  Jarnegan  my  Grandchilde,  and  to  Thomas  J.  his 
brother,   to  William  J.,  to  George  J.,  to  Edward  J.   and  to  Anne  J., 
to  My  Lady  Pawlet,  to  Mrs  Anne  Bogas,  to  my  sister  Sturley,  and  to 
my  sister  Anne,"  a  King  each; — to  Mr.  Justice  Windham,  "  to  S''  Henry 
Benefeilde,  to  my  cossen  M"^  Edward  Audley,  to  my  cossens  M"^  Edward 
Suliard  and  M"^  Thomas  S.,  to  my  Lady  Lovell,  to  my  Ladye  Petre,  to 
Mi^s  Briddiman,  to  my  cozen  Andrewes,  and  to  M''^  Hobard  of  Hallis 
Hall ;  " — to  my  servaunt  John  Dereham,  gentleman,  an  Annuity  of  £20 ; 
— to  Anne  Kucwood  my  gentlewoman,   an  Annuity  of  4  marks ; — to 
servt^  John  Powle,  Willm.  Addamson,  and  Symon  Harrys  and  Mathewe 
Harryett,  an  annuity  of   40s.  each; — to  serv*  John  Freeman; — "Also 
1  doe  give   unto  Joane,   foole,   four  poundes  in  monney  and  twenty 
shillings  a  yeare  as  longe  as  &lie  liveth.  .  .  .  Also  from  the  tyme  that 
John  Harvye  shall  not  be  kepte  and  maintayned  in  my  Sonnes  howse 
I  doe  gyve  to  the  poore  foole  a  yearly  Rent  towards  hu  maintenance  of 
fower  markes  by  yeare:" — to  Thomas  Freeman,  "40s.  by  yeare  until 
my  Sonne  male  and  shall  place  him  in  a  Beadmanshippe  at  Saincte 
Olaves  ;  " — William  Addamson  "  to  enjoy  the  Bayliewicke  of  Dages  in 
Rannington";  Residue  of  Goods,  cfec,  after  pay'  of  debts  and  funeral 
expenses  to  son  Harry  J.  he  sole  Ex°^    Overseers,  S"^  Thomas  Cornwallis, 
Knighte,  Charles  Waldegrave,  Esquire,  and  John  Derehm,  Gentleman; — 
to  one  M""  Russell,  sonne  unto  W^  Jane  Russell,  that  was  one  of  the 
Gentlewomen    of    Queene    Marye's    Privye    Chamber,    £10  "which  I 
borrowed  of   his  Mother;" — to  Nicholas  Phillippes  my  serv'  £4  and 
a  horse; — to  my  Cozen  Anne  Bogas;— to  M""  Marshall; — "to  Thomas 
Harman,  the  boye  w<=''  wayteth  on  mee,"  20s.  a  year  for  life. 
No  witnesses  given.    Proved  15th  Feb.  1583. 


23.  Fagc  232.  It  was  a  common  practice  among  the  gentry  in  the 
sixteenth  century  for  a  young  man  to  bring  his  bride  to  his  father's 
house,  and  to  spend  the  first  year  or  two  of  his  married  life  with  his 
parents.  The  separate  establishment  was  not  set  up  until  the  increase 
of  the  family  or  other  circumstances  rendered  the  change  necessary. 
Among  the  muniments  at  Rougham  Hall  there  is  an  indenture,  dated 
12th  October,  1  and  2  Philip  and  Mary  (1554),  which  sets  forth  that 
' '  In  consideration  of  a  Marriage  between  Henry,  son  and  heir  of 
William  Yelverton  of  Rougham,  Esq.,  and  Bridget,  daughter  of  Sir 
William  Drury,  Knt."  .  .  .  Sir  William  Drury  covenants  to  make 
certain  payments  and  to  give  his  daughter  ''double  apparel  and  the 
wedding  dinner."  William  Yelverton  covenants  to  settle  certain  manors 
and  lands  and  "  to  give  two  years^  board  with  two  servants,  and  at  the  end, 
for  two  years  more,  one  other  maid  and  a  woman,  and  to  pay  for  his  son 
double  apparel."    Among  the  Earl  of  Kimberley's  muniments  there  is  a 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  245 


marriage  contract  of  this  date  drawn   up  in  almost  precisely  similar 
terms. 

24.  Page  232.  In  P.  R.  0.,  Domestic,  Elizabeth,  vol.  157,  No.  88, 
is  a  paper  giving  "Information  of  the' names  and  places  of  residence 
of  certain  Recusants.  .  .  ."  Among  them  I  find  under  Norfolk,  "At 
Cossey,  the  Lady  Jerningham,  Mb.  Charles  Waldegrave  and  his  wife, 
.  ,  .  and  Mr,  Pratte  a  priest.  ,  .  .  Mr.  Robert  Downes  and  his  wife, 
who  doth  dwell  but  a  mile  off  from  Cossey  [viz.,  at  Melton  Hall]  the 
Lady  Jerningham  her  house."  Under  Suffolk  I  find  "  .  .  .  At  Winkfelde 
Castle,  Mr.  Henry  Jarningham."  This  paper  is  ascribed  to  the  year 
1581  or  1582.  In  the  P.  R.  of  Cossey  I  find,  "1582,  Sepultu  fuit  Richard 
Pratt,  17°  die  Aprilis."  As  this  is  the  only  instance  of  the  occurrence  of 
the  name  of  Pratt  in  the  Register,  the  inference  is  obvious. 

25.  Page  232.  Charles  Waldegrave,  son  and  heir  of  Sir  Edward 
Waldegrave  of  Borley,  Knight,  was,  at  his  father's  death  on  the  1st 
September,  1561,  aged  ten  years  forty  weeks  and  three  days,  i.e.,  he  was 
born  on  the  22nd  November,  1550.  Bypatent  dated  8  Feb.  1563,  Robert 
Nowell  (brother  of  Dean  Nowell)  was  appointed  his  guardian.  Nowell 
died  in  1569,  and  by  his  will  left  to  his  "good  Mr.  and  freinde  Mr. 
Secretorie  Cicill  the  wardeahi'p'pe  of  younge  Mr.  Walgrave,  with  all 
my  righte  and  intereste  in  the  same,  payeng  such  monnye  to  the  quenes 
ma^*'  as  I  shoulde  ..."  Immediately  after  he  came  of  age,  viz.,  on  the 
25th  November,  1571,  he  obtained  a  licence  from  Parkhurst,  Bishop  of 
Norwich,  to  marry  "  Hieronim  Jernegan  .  .  .  anywhere  within  the 
diocese  of  Norwich. "  Where  the  marriage  was  celebrated  I  have  not 
found.  It  is  clear  that  he  was  living  with  Lady  Jerningham,  his  wife's 
mother,  at  Cossey  in  1581,  and  apparently  continued  to  live  there  until 
her  death  in  December  1583.  His  second  son,  Charles,  in  his  answers 
to  the  interrogatories  put  to  him  on  his  admission  at  the  English 
College  at  Rome,  says  that  he  himself  was  born  at  Cossey  in  1581.  On 
the  other  hand,  his  younger  brother,  John  Waldegrave,  says  that /;?  was 
born  at  Bowthorpe  in  1592.  When  he  became  possessed  of  Stanninghall 
I  have  not  been  able  to  discover,  but  I  think  it  must  have  been  shortly 
after  the  birth  of  John  Waldegrave  in  1592 ;  for  about  this  time  the 
affairs  of  Francis  Woodhouse  of  Stanninghall  (nephew  of  Francis 
Woodhouse,  Esq.,  of  Breccles  Hall)  had  got  into  a  desperate  condition, 
and  he  must  have  been  compelled  to  sell  this  estate.  On  the  14th 
October,  41Eliz.  (1599),  Mr.  Waldegrave  settled  certain  manors  and  lands 
upon  himself  and  his  wife  Jeronyma  for  life,  and  after  their  death  on 
his  son  and  heir  Edward  Waldegrave,  and  his  wife  Eleanor  ;  remainder 
to  their  son  and  heir  Henry  Waldegrave  :  remainder  to  his  o%on  second 
son  Charles  W.  ;  remainder  to  his  third  son  John  ;  remainder  to  his 
brother  Nicholas.  He  died  at  Stanninghall  on  the  10th  January,  7 
Charles  I  (1632),  having  survived  his  wife  just  five  years.    She  was 


246  ONE   GENERATION  OF 


buried  at  Cossey,  4th  February,  1626-7.— Chancery  p.m.  Inq.  Suff., 
4  Eliz,,  No.  130 ;  the  Townely-Nowell  MS.,  edited  by  Mr.  Grosart,  pp. 
xxxvi.  and  xlix.  ;  Marriage  Licences  in  the  Keg.  Cur.  Episcop.  Norw. ; 
Answers  to  Interrogatories  at  the  Engl.  Coll.,  Rome  (JRoZZs  iH/S/S.)  ;  see 
other  authorities,  supra,  note  11. 

26.  Page  233.  See  East  Anglian,  vol.  i.  pp.  340,  370  ;  ii.  pp.  75,  89. 
Very  noticeable  is  the  startling  return  for  the  Deaneries  of  Hyngham  and 
HuMBLEYARD  in  1602.  In  the  contiguous  parishes  of  Earlham,  Bow- 
THORPE,  CossEY,  Easton,  and  RuNHALL  the  churches  are  in  ruins,  and 
in  all  these  places  the  influence  of  the  Recusant  gentry  was  paramount. 
This  subject  requires  to  be  investigated  more  minutely  than  would 
be  possible  in  these  notes. 

27.  Page  233.  Bolls  3ISS.,  u.s.  ;  Records  of  the  English  Province, 
S.J.,  series  I. ;  see  note  23. — Cossey  P.  R. 

28.  Page  236,     Father  Gerard^s  Autobiography,  p.  xxvii. 

29.  Page23Q.    Records  of  the  English  Province,  S.J. ,  sevies  I.  p.  142. 

30.  Page  237.  The  following  is  from  Watson's  Quodlibets.  I  give 
the  extract  in  extenso,  as  the  book  is  a  very  scarce  one,  and  few  of 
my  readers  can  have  the  opportunity  of  referring  to  it : — 

"  Another  surmised  holy  father  of  their  society  (in  whose  mouth  a 
man  would  think  butter  could  not  melt)  .  .  .  poor  man  I  pity  his 
simplicity  in  that,  being  otherwise  of  a  good  nature,  he  is  much  blinded 
and  corrupted  in  his  life  and  manners  by  being  a  Jesuit  .  .  .  but 
I  will  only  enlarge  myself  with  a  few  golden  threads  from  Fa.  Gerard's 
web  .  .  .  First  he  was  the  man  that  caused  Henry  Drurie  to  enter 
into  this  exercise  and  thereby  got  him  to  sell  the  manor  of  Lozell 
in  Suffolk,  and  other  lands  to  the  value  of  3500  pounds  and  got  all 
the  money  himself ;  the  said  Drurie  having  chosen  to  be  a  lay  brother. 
Afterwards  he  sent  him  to  Antwerp  to  have  his  Noviciate  by  the 
Provincial  there,  by  name  Oliverius  Manerius  (for  at  that  time  Fa. 
Garnet  had  not  his  full  authority  to  admit  any)  where  after  twelve 
or  fourteen  days  he  died,  not  without  suspicion  of  some  indirect  dealing. 
Fa.  Holt  the  Jesuit  ascribed  it  unto  the  alteration  of  his  diet,  saying 
that  he  might  have  lived  well  enough  if  he  had  remained  at  home 
and  not  have  come  thither. 

"  Two  others  had  the  exercise  given  them  at  that  time  by  Fa.  Gerard, 
viz..  Master  Anthony  Rouse,  of  whom  he  got  about  1000  pounds,  and 
Master  Thomas  Everard,  of  whom  he  bad  many  good  books  and 
other  things. 

'•Also  he  gave  the  exercise  to  Edward  Walpole,  whom  he  caused 
to  sell  the  manor  of  Tuddenham,  and  had  of  him  about  1000  marks. 

*'He  dealt  so  in  like  manner  with  Master  James  Linacre,  his  fellow 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  247 

prisoner  in  the  Clink,  from  whom  he  drew  there  400  pounds.  And 
afterwards  got  a  promise  of  him  of  all  his  lands;  but  was  prevented 
thereof  by  the  said  Linacre's  death. 

"  Furthermore,  under  pretence  of  the  said  exercise,  he  cousined  Sir 
Edmund  Huddleston's  son  and  heir  by  sundry  sleights  of  above  1000 
pounds;  and  so  he  dealt  with  Master  Thomas  Wiseman,  and  by  giving 
him  the  exercise  he  got  his  land,  and  sent  him  to  Antwerp,  where  he 
died. 

*'He  also  gave  the  exercise  to  the  eldest  son  of  Master  Walter 
Hastings.  And  he  hath  drawn  Master  William  Wiseman  into  the  said 
exercise  so  oft  as  he  hath  left  him  very  bare  to  live. 

"He  hath  so  wrought  with  Master  Nicholas  King,  lately  of  Gray's 
Inn,  as  he  hath  gotten  most  of  his  living  and  sent  him  to  Rome. 

"Master  Roger  Lee  of  Buckinghamshire  hath  been  in  this  exercise 
likewise,  and  is  also  by  him  sent  to  Rome. 

•'  In  like  manner  he  dealeth  with  such  Gentlewomen  as  he  thinketh 
fit  for  his  turn  and  draweth  them  to  his  exercise  :  as  the  Lady  Lovell, 
Mistress  Heywood,  and  Mistress  Wiseman,  now  prisoner  [1602],  of 
whom  he  got  so  much  as  now  she  feeleth  the  want  of  it. 

"By  drawing  Mistress  Fortescue,  the  widow  of  Master  Edmund 
Fortescue,  into  his  exercise,  he  got  of  her  a  farm  worth  50  pounds 
a  year  and  paid  her  no  rent. 

"Another  di'ift  he  hath  by  his  exercise  of  cousinage;  which  is  to 
persuade  such  gentlewomen  as  have  large  portions  to  their  marriage 
to  give  the  same  to  him  and  to  his  company,  and  to  become 
nuns. 

"  So  he  prevailed  with  two  of  M.  William  Wiseman's  daughters  of 
Broddocke  ;  with  Elizabeth  Sherly  born  in  Leicestershire  ;  with  Dorothy 
Ruckwood,  M.  Richard  Ruckwood's  daughter  of  Suffolk,  who  had  a 
great  portion  given  her  by  the  Lady  Elizabeth  Drury  her  grandmother ; 
with  Mistress  Tremane,  Master  Tremaine's  daughter  of  Cornwall,  she 
having  a  large  portioa  ;  with  Mistress  Mary  Tremaine  of  Dorsetshire, 
of  whom  he  had  200  pounds  ;  with  Mistress  Anne  Arundell,  of  whom  he 
got  a  great  portion  ;  vith  the  Lady  Mary  Percy  who  is  now  a  nun 
at  Bruxels.  .  .  .  But  ttis  lis  enough  for  this  time  of  their  practices 
by  fame  and  report." — Watson's  Quodlihets,  p.  91. 

The  following  description  of  Gerard's  person  is  extracted  from  the 
archives  at  Hatfield  : — 

"Jerrard's  discovery  ma>  the  better  be  by  observing  this  description 
of  him  and  his  habit.  To  hi  of  stature  tall,  high  shouldered,  especially 
when  his  cope  is  on  his  back,  black  haired,  and  of  complexion  swarth, 
hank  nosed,  high  templed,  and  for  the  most  part  attired  costly  and 
defencibly,  in  buff  leather,  garnished  with  gold  or  silver  lace,  sattin 
doublet,  and  velvet  hose  of  all  colours,  with  cloaks  correspondent, 
and  rapiers  and  daggers  gilt  cr  silvered." 


248     ONE  GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE 

Blaekwell  describes  him  thus : — 

"About  50  years  of  age,  his  head  brownish,  his  beard  more  black, 
cut  after  the  fashion  of  a  spade,  of  stature  indifferent,  and  somewhat 
thick,  decently  attired  in  black  silk  rush  hose  and  doublet,  with  a 
silk  russet  or  black  cloak,  of  good  length,  laced,  with  a  rapier  and 
dagger  sanguined  or  sometimes  gilt." 

It  is  quite  clear  that  this  Blaekwell  did  not  know  Gerard  personally, 
but  had  obtained  his  information  at  second  hand.  He  could  not  other- 
wise have  described  him  as  "of  stature  indifferent,  and  somewhat 
thick."  Gerard  beyond  all  doubt  was  above  the  ordinary  stature,  and 
in  some  circles  went  by  the  name  of  "  Long  John." 


i 


I 


CHAPTER  X 

CAPTURE    AND   IMPRISONMENT 

In  no  part  of  England  had  the  suppression  of  the  monas- 
teries caused  such  deep  discontent,  and  nowhere  had  the 
doctrines  of  the  Reformers  been  regarded  with  such  bitter 
aversion,  as  in  Yorkshire.  By  far  the  most  formidable 
outbreak  which  occurred  in  the  kingdom  during  the  six- 
teenth century  was  the  great  rebellion  of  1536,  which  for 
a  time  seriously  threatened  the  crown  of  Henry  VIII.,  and 
numbered  among  its  leaders  many  persons  of  wealth  and 
influence  in  the  Northern  Counties.  The  insurrection  of 
the  Cornishmen  in  1549,  and  that  of  Kett  in  Norfolk,  grew 
to  formidable  dimensions,  mainly  through  the  want  of  any 
organized  police  in  the  districts  in  which  they  originated, 
the  supineness  of  those  in  authority,  and  the  panic  which 
the  very  suddenness  of  the  risings  occasioned.  The 
Cornish  rebellion  was  indeed  a  religious  riot,  the  poor 
rustics  being  excited  to  frenzy  by  finding  themselves 
debarred  from  the  use  of  that  ritual  and  those  ceremonies 
which  they  regarded  as  infinitely  precious  and  dear.  The 
Norfolk  revolt  was  a  purely  agrarian  movement,  a  peasant 
war  on  a  small  scale  ;  but  though  in  one  case  Exeter  was 
menaced,  and  in  the  other  Norwich  was  besieged,  the 
insurgent  rabble  was  scattered  to  the  winds  almost  at  the 
first  appearance  of  a  disciplined  force,  and  when  the  fighting 
began  it  was  not  so  much  a  conflict  as  a  massacre.  Nor, 
indeed,  was  the  rebellion  of  the  northern  earls  much  more 
important ;  the  malcontents  from  the  first  had  no  chance 
and  little  hope  of  success,  the  leaders  had  nothing  but  their 

great  names  to  fall  back  upon,  there  was  not  a  man  among 

249 


250  ONE   GENERATION  Oh 


them  of  any  conspicuous  ability  or  any  reputation  in  peace 
or  war,  and  at  no  time  could  the  Government  have  had  any 
cause  for  alarm  or  grave  uneasiness.  The  power  of  the 
nobility  had  gone  for  ever  long  before  Queen  Elizabeth  had 
been  ten  years  upon  the  throne.  But  the  Pilgrimage  of 
Grace  at  one  time  threatened  to  develop  into  an  actual 
revolution,  and  when  the  armies  of  Aske  and  the  Duke  of 
Norfolk  faced  each  other  at  Doncaster  in  October  1536,  the 
fate  of  the  kingdom  was  trembling  in  the  balance.  When 
the  king's  side  came  out  of  that  struggle  victorious,  and 
affairs  took  the  turn  they  did,  one  of  the  results  was  the 
institution  of  a  permanent  commission  for  the  better  admin- 
istration of  the  Northern  Counties, — a  court  whose  functions, 
purporting  at  first  to  be  mainly  judicial,  became  in  process 
of  time  in  large  part  inquisitorial ;  and  its  records,  if  they 
should  ever  be  recovered,  would  present  us  with  one  of  the 
bloodiest  chapters  in  the  history  of  England.  This  was 
the  famous  *'  Council  of  the  North,"  a  name  of  terror  during 
the  later  years  of  the  sixteenth  century  to  all  who  favoured 
the  Eomish  cause  or  who  had  any  leaning  towards  the 
Papal  hierarchy  or  the  Papal  authority.^ 

At  the  suppression  of  the  monasteries  St.  Mary's  Abbey 
in  York  had  been  kept  in  the  king's  hands  ;  it  was  reserved 
as  a  royal  palace,  which  might  prove  useful  upon  occasion 
if  the  disturbances  on  the  Scottish  frontier  should  make  it 
advisable  for  the  sovereign  to  show  himself  in  the  northern 
parts  of  the  kingdom.  It  was  an  imposing  and  stately 
building,  in  which  a  prince  might  hold  his  court  and  main- 
tain a  large  retinue,  and  soon  after  Aske's  rebellion  collapsed 
it  was  made  the  official  residence  of  the  President  of  the 
Council.  Henry  Earl  of  Huntingdon  was  appointed  to 
this  office  in  the  autumn  of  1572 ;  for  years  he  had  served 
his  mistress  faithfully,  had  deserved  her  confidence  and 
gained  it.  He  was  a  man  who  had  always  sided  with  the 
party  of  progress  in  religion,  had  consistently  favoured  the 
Puritans,  and  as  consistently  set  himself  to  oppose  the 
Romanists.  From  the  hour  when  he  was  installed  in  his 
office   as  President  the   Yorkshire    gentry  whose  loyalty 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  251 


in  religion  was  at  all  questionable  began  to  have  a  very 
bad  time  of  it.  In  Sir  Thomas  Gargrave,  who  was  Vice- 
President  of  the  Council,  Lord  Huntingdon  found  a  coad- 
jutor as  zealous  as  himself,  a  relentless  persecutor,  and  one 
who,  unlike  his  chief,  managed  to  enrich  himself  at  the 
expense  of  his  victims.  The  Earl  had  scarcely  entered 
upon  his  office  before  Gargrave  sent  up  to  Burleigh  a  list 
of  all  the  principal  gentry  in  Yorkshire,  with  marks  against 
their  several  names  indicating  which  were  "  Protestants," 
"  the  worste  sorte,"  "  meane  or  less  evyll,"  and  "  doubtfull 
or  newtor."  It  is  a  suggestive  document,  and  shows  how, 
even  at  this  date,  the  country  gentry  in  the  North  were 
deeply  tinged  with  disaffection,  and  how  much  irritation 
and  discontent  was  smouldering.  From  the  first  the  Earl  of 
Huntingdon  set  himself  to  keep  down  the  malcontents  and 
to  maintain  a  vigilant  supervision  over  them  and  their 
concerns ;  while  Sandys,  the  coarse  and  miserly  Archbishop 
of  York,  co-operated  with  him  to  the  best  of  his  ability,  he 
too  having  a  keen  eye  to  the  spoil  that  might  be  looked  for 
from  the  plundered  Eecusants.  Up  to  Lord  Huntingdon's 
arrival  in  Yorkshire  the  Catholic  gentry  had  not  had  much 
to  complain  of — the  laws  were  rarely  put  into  force,  and  the 
penalties  for  non-attendance  at  church  were  rarely  exacted ; 
but  there  were  too  many  hungry  and  unscrupulous  hangers 
on  among  the  retainers  of  the  Lord  President,  and  too 
much  to  be  made  out  of  those  who  having  manors  and  houses 
and  lands  were  known  to  be  men  of  conscientious  convic- 
tions, to  allow  of  these  latter  remaining  long  unmolested. 
Very  soon  a  system  of  espionage  grew  up,  and  a  regular 
band  of  informers  was  taken  into  the  Lord  President's  pay. 
Sir  Thomas  Gargrave's  first  list  had,  it  seems,  failed  in 
its  object  of  stirring  up  the  Government  to  exercise  more 
severity ;  but  in  1577  Archbishop  Sandys  himself  forwarded 
another  and  more  elaborate  paper  to  the  Lords  of  the  Privy 
Council,  and  the  campaign  against  the  Eecusants  began  in 
earnest.  The  Archbishop's  paper  purports  to  be  a  list  of 
"  The  names,  surnames,  additions,  and  dwelling-places  of 
such  within  the  diocese  of  York  as  have  been  detected  to 


252  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

the  L.  Archbishop  of  York  and  other  Her  Maj.  Commis- 
sioners in  these  parts  for  their  disobedience  in  refusing  the 
Church  and  pubUc  prayers,  &c.,  and  do  not  conform  them- 
selves, with  a  note  of  their  abilities,  &c. ;  "  the  annual 
income  of  all  whose  names  occur  is  set  down  minutely,  that 
the  fine  imposed  might  be  adjusted  to  the  several  capacities 
of  the  proscribed,  and  in  some  cases  a  note  giving  further 
information  is  added.  It  was  not  long  before  the  Recusants 
began  to  feel  that  a  new  regime  had  begun.  As  yet  no 
blood  was  shed,  but  the  pursuivants  were  let  loose,  and 
the  searches  at  the  houses  of  the  suspected  gentry 
began  to  be  carried  on  with  a  harshness  which  up  to  this 
time  had  never  been  heard  of,  and  the  spies  vied  with  one 
another  in  their  hateful  work.  Before  a  single  Jesuit 
had  set  foot  in  England,  before  a  score  of  Cardinal 
Allen's  Seminarists  had  been  sent  across  the  seas,  we  find 
Huntingdon  writing  to  Walsingham  with  a  grim  boast  that 
on  the  information  of  "  one  of  my  spialles  "  he  had  ridden 
twenty  miles  to  make  a  raid  upon  the  houses  of  certain  of 
the  gentry  who  were  reported  to  be  harbourers  of  such 
priests  as  came  to  say  mass  and  give  absolution.  Year  by 
year  the  iron  heel  of  the  Lord  President  pressed  more  and 
more  heavily.  Unhappy  gentlemen  left  their  homes  and 
kept  in  hiding,  were  sought  for,  informed  against,  and 
hunted  down ;  the  terrible  fine  of  £20  a  month  exacted 
without  mercy,  and  those  who  were  unable  to  pay  thrown 
into  York  Castle  and  kept  at  their  own  charges.  But  when 
Campion  had  been  apprehended,  racked,  and  butchered, 
and  it  was  felt  that  the  Jesuit  Mission  had  produced  an 
important  effect,  and  might  lead  to  important  and  dangerous 
results  if  things  were  allowed  to  go  on  in  their  course 
undisturbed,  the  Lord  President  thought  that  the  time 
had  come  for  making  an  example  of  some  one  in  a 
sterner  way  than  he  had  as  yet  thought  it  prudent  to 
pursue.^ 

William  Lacey  was  a  Yorkshire  gentleman  of  Great 
Houghton  in  the  West  Riding,  of  respectable  family  and 
moderate   means,    whose    name    appears    on    Archbishop 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  253 

Sandys'  list  of  Eecusants  as  then  in  prison  at  Hull  for 
refusing  to  come  to  church.  He  managed  to  escape  from 
jail  and  to  slip  away  to  France ;  there  he  entered  at  the 
English  College  at  Eheims,  where,  and  at  Pont  k  Mousson, 
he  pursued  his  divinity  studies  for  some  time,  and  going 
thence  to  Home  obtained  from  the  Pope  a  dispen- 
sation (for  he  had  married  a  widow  and  was  therefore 
irregularis  ex  defectu,  ratione  higamim),  was  ordained  priest, 
and  returned  to  England  in  that  capacity  about  1580. 
With  the  strange  imprudence  which  characterized  the 
Seminarists  at  all  times,  he  had  no  sooner  got  back  to 
his  old  neighbourhood  than  he  set  himself  to  exercise 
his  functions  among  the  prisoners  in  York  Castle,  though 
he  might  have  known  by  this  time  that  the  spies  were 
on  the  alert  and  keeping  careful  watch  around.  On  the 
22nd  July,  1582,  as  he  was  coming  out  of  the  castle,  he 
was  arrested,  taken  before  the  Archbishop,  examined,  and 
thrown  into  a  dungeon,  where  he  was  debarred  from  all 
converse  with  his  friends,  and  on  the  11th  of  August  was 
put  up  on  his  trial  with  another  Seminarist  whose  history 
was  almost  exactly  like  his  own  ;  both  were  found  guilty 
as  a  matter  of  course,  and  equally  of  course  were 
condemned  to  death,  and  on  the  22nd  they  were  hung 
as  traitors,  special  care  being  taken  to  prevent  their 
addressing  the  multitude  who  had  assembled  at  the 
place  of  execution.  This  was  the  first  blood  shed  by  the 
Lord  President,  but  it  was  by  no  means  the  last.  On  the 
28th  November  of  this  same  year  another  lately  ordained 
priest,  James  Thompson,  was  delivered  over  to  the  hang- 
man at  the  same  spot  where  Lacey  and  Kirkman  had 
suffered.  Next  year  there  were  two  more  victims ;  in  1585 
two  more,  one  priest  and  one  layman ;  in  1586,  one 
gentleman  was  hung,  drawn,  and  quartered  for  being 
"  reconciled,"  and  another  for  having  harboured  a  priest. 
But  the  most  memorable  incident  of  this  year  was  the 
atrocious  and  almost  unexampled  barbarity  of  the  20th 
March. 3 

Margaret  Clitherow  was  the  daughter  of  Thomas  Middleton, 


254  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

a  wealthy  citizen  of  York,  and  sheriff  of  that  city  in  1565. 
On  her  father's  death  her  mother  had  taken  as  her 
second  husband  one  Henry  Maye,  who  was  Lord  Maj^or 
of  York  this  very  year,  1586,  when  his  stepdaughter 
was  brought  before  the  council  for  trial.  Margaret  was 
married  to  John  Clitherow  in  1571,  and  had  borne  him 
several  children,  of  whom  the  eldest  son  had  been  sent 
abroad  to  be  educated  a  year  before  her  last  troubles  came 
upon  her.  As  early  as  1576  she  had  been  presented  as 
a  Recusant  and  thrown  into  prison,  and  I  find  her  in  York 
Castle  in  the  October  of  the  following  year.  How  long 
she  remained  there  does  not  appear,  but  it  is  evident  that 
some  years  after  this  she  had  made  herself  notorious  by 
her  ascetic  life  and  the  uncompromising  way  in  which 
she  had  befriended  any  priest  who  needed  shelter  and  help. 
Her  husband  appears  to  have  been  a  very  thriving  trades- 
man, warm-hearted,  open-handed,  and  easy-going,  devotedly 
attached  to  his  wife  in  his  own  rough  way,  but  quite  devoid 
of  any  religious  sentiment  or  convictions.  On  the  10th  of 
March,  1586,  the  Council  called  Clitherow  before  them,  and 
apparently  the  same  day  ordered  a  search  to  be  made  at 
his  house ;  the  officers  arrested  everybody  upon  the 
premises,  and  compelled  a  boy  of  ten  or  twelve  years  of 
age  to  give  them  such  information  as  he  was  able  to 
communicate.  On  this  evidence  Margaret  Clitherow  was 
put  upon  her  trial  for  the  crime  of  concealing  priests. 
When  called  upon  to  plead  at  the  bar,  she  obstinately 
refused,  and  as  no  arguments  or  threats  could  make  her 
change  her  resolution,  she  was  condemned  to  the  "peine  forte 
et  dure,  and  actually  crushed  to  death  in  accordance  with 
the  hideous  sentence. -^ 

And  so  the  horrible  work  went  on.  In  1587  three 
priests,  in  1588  two,  in  1589  two  more,  suffered  in  this  city 
of  York  alone  for  the  crime  of  saying  mass  or  giving 
absolution,  or  simply  setting  foot  on  English  soil.  Scarcely 
a  year  passed  by  without  these  dreadful  massacres,  the 
details  of  which  are  more  revolting  and  shameful  than 
those  who  have  not  given  their  attention  to  the  subject, 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  255 

or  read  the  accounts  written  down  at  the  time,  could  be 
readily  brought  to  believe.  For  ten  years  the  butchery 
had  been  kept  up  remorselessly.  The  victims,  as  a  rule, 
were  not  hung  by  the  neck  till  they  were  dead,  but  cut 
down  while  they  were  alive  and  conscious,  then  thrown 
upon  their  backs,  the  executioner's  knife  was  plunged  into 
their  bowels,  and  the  entrails  and  heart  tossed  into  a 
cauldron  of  water  which  stood  hard  by.  In  more  than  one 
instance  the  victim  in  his  agony  and  despair  struggled  with 
the  hangman,  but  it  was  only  for  a  moment.  In  some 
cases  the  crowd  shouted  out  to  the  sheriff  to  "  let  him 
hang."  Sometimes  a  condemned  man  begged  as  a  special 
grace  that  he  "  might  not  be  bo  welled  ere  he  were  dead." 
The  rabble  looked  on  terror-struck,  but  such  scenes  could 
not  but  brutalize  them.  The  appetite  for  blood  is  a  strange 
passion,  and  once  yielded  to  is  prone  to  exercise  a  horrible 
fascination  on  some  minds. 

But  nothing  is  more  sure  than  that  these  ghastly 
tragedies  did  not  help  the  cause  they  were  meant  to  serve, 
or  weaken  the  hands  of  those  who  were  on  the  side  of  the 
sufferers.  Sympathy  for  the  ''martyrs"  never  languished ; 
the  Council  of  the  North,  with  the  blind  and  ferocious 
infatuation  which  always  characterizes  persecutors,  never 
allowed  pity  to  grow  cold.  Men  and  women,  with  any 
spark  of  chivalry  or  generous  emotion  left,  could  not  but 
feel  some  remorse  and  commiseration  for  the  men  whose 
crimes  they  could  not  be  made  to  understand,  while  they 
saw  them  suffer  for  their  faith  with  the  courage  and 
constancy  of  heroes. 

It  was  in  this  northern  province  that  Henry  Walpole 
found  himself  cast,  with  his  two  companions,  on  that  dark 
and  rainy  December  night  of  1593.  The  roar  of  the  angry 
billows  sounded  hoarsely  in  the  distance  ;  inland  were  the 
watchers,  and  no  friendly  roof  to  give  them  shelter. 
Ignorant  of  the  neighbourhood,  and  without  plans,  they 
committed  the  unaccountable  blunder  of  keeping  all 
together  instead  of  separating,  as  was  the  almost  invariable 
course   with   the   emissaries   at   their  first  landing.     They 


256  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

passed  the  night  wandering  among  the  woods  or  hiding  in 
some  outhouse,  and  early  in  the  morning  they  found  their 
way  to  Kilham,  a  place  about  nine  miles  from  where  they 
had  been  put  ashore,  and  took  refuge  in  the  village  inn.s 

Before  noon  the  tidings  had  spread  far  and  wide  that 
three  strangers,  travel- stained  and  soaked  with  rain,  had 
appeared  in  the  neighbourhood,  no  one  knew  whence,  and 
had  taken  up  their  quarters  at  the  roadside  alehouse.  The 
constables,  at  this  time  more  than  ordinarily  vigilant,  were 
soon  upon  the  track.  Three  months  before  Lord  Hunting- 
don had  laid  his  hands  upon  a  Seminary  priest  of  some 
note — one  John 'Boast — whom  he  had  been  endeavouring 
for  years  to  get  into  his  power.  On  his  succeeding  at  last, 
he  had  received  from  the  Lords  of  the  Privy  Council  a 
special  letter  of  thanks  in  acknowledgment  of  the  important 
service  rendered.^  Gratified  by  this  recognition,  the  Earl 
had  replied  to  the  Council  assuring  them  of  his  una- 
bated desire  to  deserve  the  approbation  of  his  Eoyal 
Mistress,  and  in  accordance  with  his  professions  the  coast 
had  been  watched  with  increased  strictness.  Every 
stranger  and  wayfarer  was  subjected  to  search  and  cross- 
examination,  and  the  chances  of  escape  for  any  Seminary 
priest  adrift  in  Yorkshire  had  been  reduced  to  a  minimum. 
Before  the  sun  set  on  that  first  day  after  landing  on  English 
soil  the  three  returned  exiles  had  been  arrested  and  straight- 
way committed  to  the  castle  at  York. 7 

According  to  a  document  very  recently  discovered  at 
Eome,  Henry  Walpole  and  his  companions  were  appre- 
hended on  the  7th  of  December.  No  time  was  lost  before 
subjecting  them  all  to  a  severe  scrutiny,  and  by  the  22nd  of 
the  month  the  Privy  Council  had  not  only  received  from 
Lord  Huntingdon  a  report  of  the  capture,  but  had  drawn  up 
and  forwarded  instructions  in  reply. 

The  apprehension  had  come  so  suddenly  that  there  had 
been  no  time  for  making  any  concerted  plan.  In  prison 
the  three  men  were  allowed  no  communication,  they  all 
gave  their  true  names,  and  no  attempt  was  made  at  disguise 
or  concealment  of   the   purpose  of  their  mission.     Henry 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  257 

Walpole  at  once  confessed  himself  a  Jesuit  Father,  and  his 
brother  and  Lingen  allowed  that  they  had  served  in  Sir 
William  Stanley's  regiment  in  Flanders.  But  when  it  came 
to  their  being  questioned  on  matters  which  affected  the 
safety  or  even  the  life  of  others,  Henry  Walpole  and  Lingen 
were  obstinately  silent,  and  persuasion,  entreaty,  and 
menace  were  powerless  to  extort  from  them  a  word.  It  was 
otherwise  with  Thomas  Walpole.  He  was  not  of  the  stuff 
that  martyrs  are  made  of,  and  as  for  his  religious  convictions 
they  cannot  have  been  deeply  rooted  at  this  time,  whatever 
they  became  in  the  years  that  followed.  He  had,  to  be 
sure,  fought  on  the  Spanish  side  against  the  revolted 
Flemings,  but  it  was  as  a  soldier  of  fortune  that  he  had 
joined  the  wars  ;  his  faith  had  little  to  do  with  the  matter. 
If  to  have  served  under  Stanley  was  treason,  it  was  a  sort 
of  treason  that  might  easily  be  condoned,  and  *'  young 
Thomas,"  as  Topcliffe  calls  him,  was  not  disposed  to  put 
his  life  in  jeopardy  by  keeping  back  information  which  it 
was  no  matter  of  conscience  with  him  to  withhold.  Lord 
Huntingdon  saw  that  the  younger  man  might  be  worked 
upon  by  a  little  dexterous  diplomacy,  and  he  spared  no  pains 
to  extort  from  him  all  he  knew.  Thomas  Walpole  made 
but  little  difficulty ;  perhaps  he  saw  that  there  was  no 
chance  for  him  or  his  brother  except  in  making  an  open 
confession,  and  having  once  begun  to  be  communicative  he 
told  all  he  knew  :  he  accompanied  the  officers  to  the  sea- 
shore and  dug  up  the  packet  of  letters  which  his  brother 
had,  on  their  first  landing,  hidden  in  the  sand  under  a 
stone ;  and  when  a  short  time  after  another  returned  priest 
was  arrested,  Thomas  identified  him  as  one  whom  he  had 
seen  at  Antwerp  and  Brussels  years  before,  and  thus 
became  the  means  of  his  being  sent  to  the  Tower  for  further 
and  severer  handling.^ 

Meanwhile  the  Earl  resorted  to  other  means  for  working 
upon  the  elder  brother,  who  was  by  this  time  felt  to  be  a 
representative  man.  It  would  be  a  great  point  gained  if  his 
convictions  could  be  shaken,  or,  better,  if  in  open  con- 
troversy he  might  be  put  to  the  worse  by  some  practised 

17 


258  ONE   GENERATION  OF 


theologians  qualified  to  stand  forward  as  champions  for  the 
Protestant   faith.     There   were    by   this   time   at   York   a 
whole  bevy  of  Eomish  priests  who  had  been  arrested  and 
were  in  confinement ;  all  had  been  hard  pressed  to  recant 
and  give  information  of  their  former  associates,  and  under 
promise   of   their  lives  being  spared  they   had,  in   several 
cases,  yielded  to  the  temptation,  and  having  once  broken 
with  their  old  friends,  all  chance  of  regaining  the  confidence 
of  the   Eomish  party  being  gone,  they  threw   themselves 
into  the  arms  of  their  new  supporters  with  the  bitterness 
which   usually   characterises  perverts.     Of  these  men   the 
most  conspicuous  were  Anthony  Major,  Thomas  Bell,  and  a 
Mr.  Hardesty;  they  were  all  "Seminary  priests,"  and  all 
had    been   betrayed   by   one    of    their   fellow- Seminarists, 
George   Dingley,   about   a   year   before.9     At   the   time   of 
their  arrest  they  were  wandering  about  Yorkshire  exercising 
their  functions  as  priests,  and  Bell  and  Major  were  settled 
somewhere  in  the  neighbourhood  of  York.     Hardesty  had 
passed  through  Brussels  on  his  way  to  Rome  at  the  end  of 
1590,  and  had  there  received  some  assistance  from  Henry 
Walpole ;  but  after  his  departure  news  came  that  he  was 
under  grave  suspicion,  and  that  even  then  he  "  had  pub- 
lished  articles  scarce  sound  showing  himself  a  cynic  and 
schismatic,"  ^°  but  he  had  managed  to  clear  himself  of  such 
charges  as  had  been  brought  against  him,  and  had  contrived 
to  get  sent  to  England  as  an  accredited  "  missioner."      All 
three  men   on  finding  themselves  in  peril  appear  to   have 
at  once  turned  round,  and  Bell  became  afterwards  a  con- 
spicuous personage  and  as  furious  and  violent  a  declaimer 
against  the  Papacy  as  the  strongest  Puritan  could  desire  to 
find.    Father  Parsons,  in  one  of  his  most  caustic  books,  pours 
out  against  him  all  the  vials  of  his  scorn  and  indignation, 
and  ''  The  dolefuU  knell   of   Thomas  Bell  "  is  among  the 
most  telling  and  pungent  of  Parsons'  compositions.     The 
three   ''converted"    Seminarists    might   be   presumed    to 
know   the   weak   points   of    the   controversy   between   the 
Churches  of  England  and  Rome  :  they  all  professed  to  have 
been  themselves  convinced  of  the  errors  of  their  ways ;  they 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  259 

had  all  been  brought  to  see  the  falsity  of  theh^  belief, 
and  it  was  but  fair  that  they  should  now  be  used  to  bring 
another  back  to  the  true  path  ;  accordingly  they  were 
summoned  to  take  part  in  a  set  controversy  with  the  lately 
captured  Jesuit,  who  professed  his  readiness  to  defend  the 
truth  from  the  Eomish  point  of  view,  and  if  he  were 
vanquished  in  argument  to  recant  his  errors  as  they  had 
done.  But  the  converted  Seminarists  were  not  left  to 
carry  on  the  battle  unaided;  the  Earl's  chaplain,  Dr.  Favour, 
"  a  very  mild  divine,"  as  Topcliffe  calls  him,  who  had  lately 
been  appointed  Vicar  of  Halifax,  and  a  man  of  learning  and 
piety,  was  also  invited  to  take  part  in  the  disputation,  and 
along  with  these  were  associated  some  of  the  leading  clergy 
of  York — Dr.  Bennet,  one  of  the  Prebendaries  of  the 
Cathedral,  and  Mr.  Eemington,  Archdeacon  of  the  East 
Riding.  Archdeacon  Remington  was  a  Cam,bridge  man, 
and  while  a  fellow  of  Peterhouse  had  been  Henry  Walpole's 
tutor ;  he  seems  to  have  taken  little  part  in  the  argument, 
and,  indeed,  was  present  but  once,  when  we  are  told  that 
"  he  said  they  came  to  make  a  friendly  conference  .  .  . 
that  he  had  been  my  tutor  at  Cambridge  and  wished  me 
well."" 

It  is  difficult  to  make  out  whether  the  conferences  which 
these  clergymen  carried  on  with  their  Jesuit  opponent  were 
public  or  private ;  the  notes  which  Henry  Walpole  drew  up 
afterwards,  and  which  he  forwarded  to  the  Lord  Hunting- 
don, are  now  in  the  Record  Office,  and  were  printed  in 
the  Irish  Ecclesiastical  Record  in  1873,  but  they  leave  it 
uncertain  whether  any  formal  debate  was  held  in  presence 
of  a  general  audience,  while  it  is  pretty  certain  that  some 
part  of  the  dispute  was  carried  on  in  Walpole's  own 
chamber.  An  appearance  of  fairness  and  some  kindly 
consideration  for  the  prisoner  was  kept  up  throughout,  and 
he  was  even  allowed  access  to  books,  which  were  supplied 
to  him  freely.  We  are  forcibly  reminded  of  Campion's 
famous  disputation  in  Westminster  Hall  twelve  j^ears 
before,  and  it  may  well  be  that  to  Henry  Walpole  himself 
that   memorable   scene    recurred,   and    perhaps,  the  hope 


26o  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

suggested  itself,  that,  though  the  master's  fate  might  be 
awaiting  the  scholar,  yet  before  the  end  he  too  might  win 
over  some  disciple  who  in  his  turn   should   take   up   the 
mantle  that  was  now  upon  his  own  shoulders.     Be  that  as 
it  may,  this  controversy  ended  as  such  controversies  usually 
do,  each  side  perfectly  [satisfied  with  itself,  neither  in  the 
least  shaken  or  influenced  by  the  conflict  of  words.     On  the 
whole  the  Jesuit  seems  to  have  been  the  better  disputant, 
and  in  proportion   as   he   had  shown  himself   superior  in 
dialectic  skill,  in  that  proportion  was  he  sure  to  bring  upon 
himself  increased  animosity  from  his  opponents.     It  soon 
became  evident  that  this  man   was   not  of  the   Bell  and 
Hardesty  stamp — one  who  had  his  price,  and  that  a  very 
low  price,  easily  set  down  at  its  money  value  ;  but  that 
though  he  were  never  so  misguided,  obstinate,  or  vain,  he 
was  certainly  in   earnest,  and  that  if   these  endless   con- 
troversies did  nothing  else  they  were  having  the  dangerous 
efl'ect  of  gaining  for  the  Jesuit  Father  a  character  for  learning, 
piety,  and  devoted  zeal.     So  the  controversies  were  stopped, 
and  Henry  Walpole  thereupon  assumed  an  aggressive  atti- 
tude ;   he  actually  had  the  audacity  to  employ  his  time  in 
jail  in  composing  a  tract  with  the  title  Beware  of  False 
ProphetSj  which  was  directed  against  those  very  ministers 
who  had  so  lately  taken  part  in  the  disputation  that  had 
been  going  on.     This  was  too  much  for  the  Lord  President, 
and  as  any  further  delay  in  dealing  with  such  a  case  would 
be  only  loss  of  time,  the  Earl  appointed  a  jail  delivery  for 
the  24th  January,  1594,  when  the  Walpoles  and  Lingen  were 
to  be  put  upon  their  trial. 

But  here  a  difficulty  was  suggested  by  "the  learned  of 
the  council."  The  statute  which  made  it  high  treason  for 
a  Jesuit  Father  to  land  in  England  was  plain  enough, 
and  Henry  Walpole  might  have  been  tried  for  his  life  at 
first,  as  he  was  at  last,  solely  upon  this  indictment.  But 
in  the  case  of  Lingen  and  Thomas  Walpole  it  was  by  no 
means  so  certain  that  the  law  could  touch  them.  They 
had  borne  arms  under  the  Queen's  enemies,  to  be  sure, 
and   Lingen   had   been   a  pirate,   but   these   off'ences   had 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  261 


been  "committed  beyond  the  seas,"  and  it  was  very 
questionable  how  far  they  could  be  reached  by  any  laws 
that  then  existed.  Hereupon  the  Earl  wrote  off  in  haste 
to  the  Lord  Keeper  Puckering,  explaining  the  nature  of  the 
technical  objection  that  had  been  raised,  and  suggesting 
that  a  special  commission  should  be  issued,  "the  example 
whereof "  (he  adds)  "  will  do  good  in  these  parts. "^^ 
Astonishing  though  it  be,  it  is  nevertheless  almost  certain 
that  no  such  commission  was  ever  issued,  because  there  was 
no  laio  to  deal  with  the  case  of  the  two  laymen.  Piracy  and 
robbery  on  the  high  seas  were  such  venal  offences  that  the 
law  took  little  or  no  cognisance  of  them,  and  for  serving 
in  the  armies  of  France  or  Spain,  even  against  the  Crown 
of  England,  it  appears  that  no  man  could  be  called  to 
account  on  English  soil.  The  Government  had  too  much 
to  do  with  hunting  up  priests  and  putting  the  screw  on 
Eecusants  at  home  to  trouble  itself  with  the  doings  of  men 
who  were  living  by  their  wits  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Channel.  In  the  case  of  a  needy  adventurer,  driven  by 
his  necessities  to  acts  of  violence,  it  was  no  man's  interest 
to  hang  him,  and  no  man's  gain  to  strip  him  of  his  all. 
Cruel  and  bloody  as  the  laws  were,  there  were  loopholes  by 
which  the  worst  criminals  could  escape  now  and  then. 
"Benefit  of  clergy"  still  had  a  meaning;  and  if  a  man 
had  friends  in  high  places  he  could  cheat  the  gallows 
even  at  the  eleventh  hour.  It  was  only  the  poor  wretch 
who  had  a  conscience,  and  who  dared  not  go  against  that 
conscience,  who  had  no  hope  of  pity  or  respite.  During 
the  three  years  ending  with  this  year,  1594,  I  find  no 
fewer  than  sixty-one  pardons  recorded  for  murder,  burglary, 
highway  robbery,  and  other  felonies  ;  but  pardon  to  priests 
or  their  harbourers  there  are  none :  to  such  criminals  no 
mercy  might  be  shown. ^3 

And  so  Lingen  and  Thomas  Walpole  found  themselves 
scarcely  amenable  to  the  law  for  any  offence  against  its 
enactments ;  but  inasmuch  as  all  three  defendants  were 
apprehended  together,  the  technical  objection  which  had 
been   urged   in   favour   of   the   two   laymen    was    allowed 


262  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


indirectly,  and  to  some  small  extent  affected  the  priest  with 
whom  they  had  been  so  intimately  associated.     No  special 
commission  was  sent  down  to  York,  "  the  example  whereof 
might  do  good  in  these  parts."     But  a  special  commissioner 
was  sent  down  by  the  Lords  of  the   Privy  Council,   one 
whose  practised  hand  would  be  sure  to  deal  skilfully  with 
such  a  matter  as  this,  and  to  him  the  case  of  the  Jesuit 
Father   was  committed  accordingly.     Towards  the  end  of 
January   the   dreaded   Eichard   Topclilfe    appears    on   the 
scene.     Immediately  on  his  arrival  Lingen  was  examined, 
and  a  report  of  his  answers  sent  up  to  the  Privy  Council 
on  the  21st  January.     He  obstinately  refused  to  disclose 
anything,  and  what  he  did  say  declined  to  asseverate  on 
oath.     Thomas  Walpole  had  little  or  nothing  more  to  tell ; 
he  had  already  told  all ;  how  much  that  was  may  appear 
from  Topcliffe's  own  letter,  in  which  he  exultingly  praises 
the   young   man   for  his  candour,  and   adds  to   the   Lord 
Keeper,  "  By  this  your  Lordship  may  show  unto  her  Sacred 
Majesty  how  God  blessed  her  Highness  with  the  uttering 
of   that   which   I   see   will   turn   to   her    high   service   for 
discovering  of  disloyal  men  and  women  both  about  London, 
in   sundry  counties  in  England,  and  deeply  in  Ireland ;  " 
and  then,  after  giving  a  list  of  some  trinkets  and  tokens 
with  which  Henry  Walpole  had  been  entrusted  to  hand  to 
the  friends  of  the  exiles  if  he  should  be  fortunate  enough 
to  meet  with  them  on  his  mission,  Topcliffe  significantly 
adds,   "Much  more  lieth  hid  in  these  two  lewd  persons, 
the  Jesuit  and  Lingen,  which  wit  of  man  giveth  occasion 
to  be  suspected  that  labour  of  man  without  further  authority 
and  conference  than  his  Lordship  hath  here  can  never  he 
digged  out.  ...  So  the  Jesuit  and  Lingen  must  be  dealt 
with   in   some   sharp  sort  above,  and  more  will  burst  out 
than  yet,  or  otherwise,  can  be  known,   yet  see  I  more  in 
this  service  than  ever  I  did  in  any  before  to  her  Majesty's 
benefit    both    of   state    and   purse." "-^    Yes,   for   be   it  re- 
membered that  this  same  Henry  Walpole  was  his  father's 
eldest  son  and  heir,  and  it  might  be  that  the  old  man  at 
Anmer  Hall  could  be  got  at  and  accused,  for  such  things 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  263 

had  been  before  and  might  be  again,  and  it  might  be  too 
that  rumours  were  rife  that  old  Christopher's  health  was 
failing,  and  then  whose  would  the  inheritance  be? 

It  seems  that  Topcliffe's  stay  at  York  was  short.  In 
a  letter  of  Lord  Huntingdon's,  dated  12th  February,  he 
is  spoken  of  as  having  gone  some  time  ;  ^s  but  while  the 
result  of  his  visit  was  as  yet  unknown,  Henry  Walpole 
found  means  of  communicating  with  his  friends  outside, 
and,  through  the  connivance  probably  of  his  jailer  or  other 
functionaries  in  the  castle,  he  managed  to  keep  up  a  corres- 
pondence, considerable  portions  of  which  have  been  pre- 
served. 

The  original  of  the  following  letter  was  still  in  existence 
when  Bishop  Challoner  published  his  Missionary  Priests  in 
1741 ;  but  at  the  French  Revolution  it  disappeared  along 
with  thousands  of  other  records  of  this  bloody  time  : — 

"Your  Reverence's  Letters  give  me  great  Comfort;  but 
if  I  could  but  see  you,  tho'  it  were  but  for  one  Hour, 
it  would  be  of  greater  Service  to  me,  than  I  can  possibly 
express.  I  hope  that  what  is  wanting,  my  sweet  Lord 
JesiLs  will  supply  by  other  Means,  whose  heavenly  Comfort 
and  Assistance  has  always  hitherto  stood  by  me  in  my 
greatest  Necessities,  and,  I  am  persuaded,  will  continue  so 
to  CO,  since  his  Love  for  us  is  everlasting. 

"If  I  would  write  down  all  Things  that  have  here  passed 
with  our  Adversaries,  it  would  be  endless,  and  the  Work  of 
a  long  time.  In  my  Examination  I  gave  in  in  Writing  a 
long  Account  of  my  Life  beyond  the  Seas,  of  the  Places 
where  I  lived,  and  of  my  Actions  and  Designs ;  which,  I 
assured  them,  had  no  other  Butt  than  the  only  Glory  of 
Goi,  and  the  Increase  of  the  holy  Catholic  Faith.  With 
which  View  I  told  them,  I  returned  into  England,  with 
a  very  great  Desire  of  the  Conversion,  not  only  of  the 
People,  but  most  of  all,  of  the  Queen  herself,  and  of  the 
whole  English  Nobility ;  which  I  plainly  assured  them, 
I  should  ever  use  my  best  Endeavours  to  bring  about, 
with  the  Grace  of  God. 

''  To  their  Queries  concerning  others,  I  refused  to  answer. 


264  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

And  when  Topliffe  threatened  that  he  would  make  me 
answer  when  he  had  me  in  Bridewell,  or  in  the  Tower, 
I  told  him,  That  our  Lord  God,  I  hoped,  would  never  ^permit 
me,  for  Fear  of  any  Torments  whatsoever,  to  do  anything 
against  his  divine  Majesty,  or  against  my  own  Conscience,  or 
to  the  Prejudice  of  Jtcstice,  and  the  Innocence  of  others. 

"  I  have  had  various  Conferences  and  Disputations  with 
many  of  the  Heretics.     And  whereas  I  believed  I  should 
have   been  tried  at  the  last  Assizes  in  this   City    [^York] 
I  sent  in  Writing  to  the  Lord  President,  all  those  Con- 
ferences and  Disputations ;  who  had  ordered  me  Pen,  Ink, 
and   Paper  for  that  Purpose.     To  which  I  joined  a  large 
Discourse,  or  Treatise ;  in  which  I  exhorted  all  to  beware  of 
false  Prophets,  and  to  give  Ear  to  the  Voice  of  the  holy 
Church,  the  Spouse  of  the  King,  the  House,  the  Vineyard, 
and  the  City  of  Christ.     One  of  the  Ministers  complain'd 
of  me   much   to   the   President,  for  being  so   bold  as  to 
put  down  such  Things  in  Writing :  But  he  could  not  refute 
what  was  written :   And,  indeed,  they  seem  to  me   to  be 
much  confounded.     Blessed  be  Jestis,  Qui  dat  os  insipienti, 
cui  non  possunt  resistere  sapientes.     I  want  very  much  to 
have  a  Book  or  two  for  a  few  Hours  ;  but  if  I  cannot  have 
them,   Jesus,  our  God  and  Lord,  is  at  Hand;  and   he  is 
the   eternal  Wisdom.     Your  Reverence  will  be  pleased  to 
pray  to  him,  that  he  may  always  stand  by  me,  and  that 
all  Things  may  turn  out  to  his  Glory.  ^ 

*'  I  am  much  astonished  that  so  vile  a  creature  as  I 
am  should  be  so  near,  as  they  tell  me,  to  the  Crown  of 
Martyrdom :  But  this  I  know  for  certain,  that  the  Blood 
of  my  most  blessed  Saviour  and  Redeemer,  and  his  most 
sweet  Love,  is  able  to  make  me  worthy  of  it.  Omnia  possum 
in  eo  qui  me  confortat.  Your  Reverence,  most  loviag 
Father,  is  engag'd  in  the  Midst  of  the  Battle.  I  sit  here 
an  idle  Spectator  of  the  Field;  yet  King  David  has 
appointed  an  equal  Portion  for  us  both  ;  and  Love,  Charity, 
and  Union,  which  unites  us  together  in  Jesus  Christ  our 
Lord,  makes  us  mutually  Partakers  of  one  another's 
Merits  :   And   what   can  be  more    closely  united  than  we 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  265 


two,  who,  as  your  Reverence  sees,  Simul  segregati  sumus  in 
hoc  minister  mm. 

"  The  President  inquired  of  me  who  was  the  Superior 

of  our  Society  in  this  Kingdom  ?  whether  it  was  this,  or  the 

other,  or  who  it  was  ?     Topliffe  answered.  He  knew  who 

it   was,    and   named   him.     I   beg   your   Reverence  would 

communicate   this  Letter  to  all  our  Friends :  I  desire  to 

give  myself  to  every  one  of  them;  and  more  particularly 

to  all  our  most  dear  Fathers  and  Brothers  of  the  Society 

of    Christ    my    Jesus,   in    whose    Prayers,    Labours,    and 

Sacrifices,  as  I  have  a  Share,  so  have  I  a  great  Confidence. 

About  Midlent  I  hope  my  Lot  will  be  decided,  either  for 

Life  or  Death  ;  for  then  the  Assizes  will  be  held  here  again. 

In  the  meanwhile  I  have  Leisure  to  prepare  myself,  and 

expect,  with  good  Courage,  whatever  his  divine   Majesty 

shall  be  pleased  to  appoint  for  me.     I  beg  your  Reverence 

to  join  your  holy  Prayers  with  my  poor  ones,  that  I  may 

walk  worthy  of  that  high  and  holy  Name  and  Profession 

to  which  I  am  called;  which  I  trust  in  the  Mercy  of  our 

Lord  he  will  grant  me,  not  regarding  so  much  my  many 

Imperfections,  as  the  fervent  Labours,  Prayers,  and  holy 

Sacrifices   of    so    many    Fathers,    and    my    Brothers    his 

Servants,   who   are   employed  over   all  the  World   in   his 

Service  :  And  I  hope,  thro'  the  Merits  of  my  most  sweet 

Saviour  and  Lord,  that  I  shall  be  always  ready,  whether 

living  or  dying,  to  glorify  him,  which  will  be  for  my  eternal 

Happiness.     And  if  my  Unworthiness  and  Demerits  shall 

keep  me  at  present  at  a  Distance  from  the  Crown,  I  will 

strive  to  deserve  it  by  a  greater  Solicitude  and  Diligence 

for  the  future.     And  if,  in  his  Mercy,  our  Lord  shall  grant 

me  now  to  wash  my  Garments  in  the  Blood  of  the  Lamb, 

I  hope  to  follow  him  for  ever  cloth'd  in  White. 

"  I  can  never  end  when  I  get  any  Time  to  write  to  your 
Reverence,  which  I  have  been  seldom  able  to  do ;  and 
whether,  as  long  as  I  live,  I  shall  ever  have  another  Oppor. 
tunity  I  know  not.  I  confess'd  in  my  Examinations,  That  I 
had  labour' d  for  the  Encrease  of  the  Tioo  Seminaries  in  Spain, 
and  for  that  of  St.  Omer's  ;  a7id  that  I  had  returned  hearty 


266  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

Thanks  to  his  Catholic  Majesty  for  his  great  Favours  to 
the  Seminary  of  St.  Omer's  :  /  also  confess'd,  that  all  my 
Actions  had  always  in  Vieio  the  Good  of  others,  and  no 
one's  Harm  ;  tJie  ijrocuring  Peace  among  all,  and  the  i?ro- 
pagati7ig  our  holy  Catholic  Faith,  and  the  Kingdom  of 
Christ,  to  the  utmost  of  my  Power.  This  was  the  Sum 
of  my  general  Confession,  which  I  gave  in  Writing,  sign'd 
by  my  own  Hand,  to  the  President  and  to  Topliffe.  They 
ask'd  me,  what  I  would  do  if  the  Pope  should  wage  War 
against  England.  I  answered,  That  the  Circumstances 
of  that  Time  loould  give  me  more  Light :  and  that  I  should 
then  have  Becourse  to  our  Lord  God  for  Counsel,  and 
would  think  seriously  07i  it  before  I  would  any  luays  inter- 
meddle with  Things  of  War.  Hcec  d  hujusmodi,  de  quihus 
postea.  May  Jestis  be  always  with  your  Reverence. 
Or  emus  pro  invicem." 

If  the  reader  finds  in  this  letter  some  things  which 
may  appear  to  him  distasteful,  and  some  which  give  him 
but  a  mean  idea  of  the  intellect  or  the  good  sense  of 
the  writer,  I  would  beg  him  to  remember  that  I  am  in 
no  ways  concerned  with  proving  that  this  Jesuit  Father 
was  a  man  at  all  in  advance  of  his  age,  but  exactly  the  con- 
trary. What  we  do  want  is  to  put  ourselves  in  a  position 
to  estimate  rightly  the  actual  state  of  feeling  and  habits 
of  thought  of  the  men  who  set  themselves  to  "  reduce  " 
England  in  the  sixteenth  century ;  and  if  we  can  afford 
to  smile,  as  we  well  may,  at  their  Quixotic  venture,  at 
the  astonishing  ignorance  which  they  displayed  at  the 
forces  aiTayed  against  them,  and  at  their  lack  of  the 
most  essential  agencies  for  effecting  their  purpose,  we  can 
also  afford  to  give  them  some  little  credit  for  the  enthusiasm 
which  animated  them,  and  to  regard  with  abhorrence  the 
ruffians  whose  trade  was  to  hunt  down  such  victims  as 
these,  and  whose  boast  it  was  to  torture  and  slay  them. 

While  Topcliffe  was  away  in  London,  and  the  fate  of 
Henry  Walpole  was  still  uncertain,  his  friends  outside 
determined  to  make  an  effort  to  effect  his  release.  How 
this  was  to  have  been  carried  out  it  is  now  impossible  to 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  267 

say ;  but  money  could  do  a  great  deal  in  those  days  among 
jailers  and  guards,  and  the  discipline  of  the  prisons  was 
incredibly  lax.  The  management  of  the  whole  plot  was 
to  be  left,  of  course,  to  the  confederates  outside,  but  it 
was  necessary  that  the  prisoner  himself  should  concur  in 
the  arrangements  and  be  willing  to  make  the  attempt,  which 
would  be  attended  with  considerable  danger  and  hazard. 

By  far  the  most  influential  man  amongst  the  Catholics 
of  the  north  at  this  time  was  Eichard  Holtby.  He  was  a 
Yorkshireman,  born  at  Brayton  in  the  West  Biding,  and 
had  entered  the  Society  of  Jesus  in  1583.  He  seems  to 
have  been  sent  into  Yorkshire  shortly  after  Campion's 
execution,  and  had  been  diligently  and  very  warily  at  work 
in  his  own  neighbourhood  ever  since :  though  frequently 
mentioned,  and  more  than  once  informed  against,  he 
seemed  to  bear  a  charmed  life,  and,  as  far  as  appears,  he 
was  never  once  apprehended.  Of  no  other  English  Jesuit 
can  it  be  said  that  he  exercised  his  vocation  in  England  for 
upwards  of  fifty  years,  and  that  too  with  extraordinary 
effect  and  ceaseless  activity,  without  once  being  thrown 
into  jail  or  once  falling  into  the  hands  of  the  pursuivants, 
and  quietly  died  in  his  bed  in  extreme  old  age.  Holtby 
must  have  had  some  very  powerful  friends  in  Yorkshire, 
to  escape  molestation  so  long.  He  lived  to  be  the  Superior 
of  the  English  Jesuits  after  the  execution  of  Garnet,  and 
he  took  an  active  part  in  the  matter  of  the  oath  of  alle- 
giance when  the  Archpriest  Blackwell  gave  an  example 
of  submission  to  the  powers  that  be  in  1608.^^  At  the  time 
we  are  now  concerned  with,  Holtby  seems  to  have  been 
in  and  out  of  York  Castle  continually,  and,  though  denied 
personal  intercourse  with  Henry  Walpole,  he  managed 
to  keep  up  with  him  a  frequent  correspondence,  and 
acquired  a  great  ascendancy  over  him ;  the  gentler  and 
more  romantic  disposition  of  the  younger  man  yielding 
itself  to  the  direction  of  a  nature  more  masculine  and 
vigorous  than  his  own.  When,  on  Topcliffe's  departure, 
Henry  Walpole's  friends  laid  their  plans  for  a  rescue,  and 
it  only  remained  for  the  prisoner  to  throw  himself  into  the 


268  ONE   GENERATION  OF 


plot,  he  hesitated.  Scruples  of  conscience  suggested  them- 
selves, and  that  too  eager  longing  for  martyrdom,  which 
has  been  noticed  before,  came  in  to  confuse  his  judgment 
and  to  make  him  exaggerate  the  risks  and  to  dwell  upon 
the  consequences  that  might  result  from  either  success  or 
failure.  Perplexed  and  doubtful,  he  refused  to  take  the 
responsibihty  of  the  venture  till  he  had  consulted  Holtby ; 
and  he  resolved  to  draw  up  a  ''  case  of  conscience,"  submit 
the  matter  to  him,  and  abide  by  his  decision,  whatever  it 
might  be.  Holtby,  a  man  of  strong  sense  and  great 
practical  ability,  was  in  point  of  fact  far  better  able  to 
pronounce  upon  the  feasibility  of  the  proposed  plan  of 
escape  than  Henry  Walpole  or  his  friends.  He  knew  the 
risks  which  would  have  to  be  run  and  the  serious  conse- 
quences which  would  ensue  in  the  event  of  failure ;  perhaps 
he  judged  that  Walpole  had  not  the  nerve  or  the  cunning 
to  carry  him  through,  and  with  characteristic  shrewdness 
he  decidedly  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  the  attempt  in  this 
case  should  not  be  made. ^7  The  freedom  of  one  Jesuit 
Father  might  be  purchased  too  dearly  by  the  blood  of 
others,  and  how  many  others  it  was  impossible  to  say. 

When  Henry  Walpole  received  this  answer  he  accepted 
it  as  the  voice  of  God.  He  wrote  back  a  letter,  which, 
though  it  has  only  reached  us  in  a  Latin  or  Spanish  transla- 
tion, reads  like  the  rhapsody  of  some  excited  devotee  who 
has  worked  himself  up  to  believe  that  death  at  the  hang- 
man's hands  is  the  most  glorious  euthanasia.  Surrendering 
himself  to  the  one  idea  of  martyrdom,  he  had  become 
possessed  by  it,  and  henceforth  his  actions  were  out  of 
the  range  of  criticism :  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to 
let  matters  take  their  course. 

And  yet  there  was  one  chance  of  escape,  one  hope  of 
deliverance.  Thomas  Walpole  had  thrown  himself  upon 
the  mercy  of  the  Lord  President :  might  not  his  brother 
be  induced  to  do  the  same?  By  this  time  the  younger 
brother  had  been  allowed  his  liberty,  though  still  apparently 
kept  under  surveillance,  and  urged  by  his  strong  affection, 
while  at  the  same  time  he  was  unable  to  sympathise  with 
the  fanaticism  of  his  more  fervent  and  enthusiastic  brother. 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  269 


at  the  suggestion  of  Lord  Huntingdon  he  made  one  last 
effort  to  save  him.  He  addressed  a  long  letter  to  Henry 
Walpole,  which  was  forwarded  to  him  by  the  Earl,  in  which 
he  informed  him  of  all  that  he  had  himself  disclosed,  and 
pressed  upon  him  the  absolute  necessity  of  similar  out- 
spokenness, if  he  would  save  himself  from  the  rack  and  the 
gallows.  From  the  young  soldier's  point  of  view  all  attempt 
at  concealment  was  now  suicidal — there  was  nothing  to  hide. 
It  was  mere  madness  to  attempt  to  withhold  the  names 
of  his  friends,  or  to  keep  back  information  which  had  been 
given  already  without  reserve ;  and  he  was  implored  to 
hide  nothing  which  in  point  of  fact  was  no  longer  hidden  : 
stubborn  silence  could  only  turn  to  his  own  ruin.^^ 

It  was  all  in  vain.  For  the  younger  brother  to  give  such 
information  as  he  was  master  of  was  one  thing — after  all, 
there  was  but  little  that  he  had  to  tell;  it  was  a  very  different 
thing  for  the  elder  to  act  the  traitor's  part,  and  betray 
the  friends  and  kindred  with  whom  for  years  he  had  been 
keeping  up  a  correspondence.  The  latest  news  about  the 
seminaries  and  their  scholars, — the  particulars  about  his 
own  labours  abroad, — the  incidents  of  his  journeys  or  the 
details  of  his  interview  with  the  King  of  Spain, — these  were 
matters  that  Lord  Huntingdon  or  the  Government  were 
welcome  to  know ;  but  to  surrender  the  names  of  those 
at  home  who  had  compromised  themselves  by  befriending 
him  would  bring  beggary  upon  many  a  household, 
and,  God  helping  him,  where  the  lives  and  fortunes  of 
others  were  at  stake  he  would  be  silent  as  the  grave. 
Unmoved  by  threats  or  entreaties,  arguments  or  expostula- 
tions, he  was  prepared  to  suffer  the  worst  that  could  befall 
him  ;  and  blinded  by  that  which  men  call  their  conscience, 
but  which  is  often  the  name  for  something  far  less  deserv- 
ing of  our  respect,  and  with  the  emotional  side  of  his 
nature  stimulated  to  the  point  of  monomania,  he  prepared 
to  meet  his  doom  with  the  same  determination  that  an 
Indian  devotee  prepares  to  throw  himself  before  the 
car  of  Juggernaut.  The  torture  chamber  and  the  dungeons 
of  the  Tower  were  the  scene  of  the  next  act  in  this 
miserable  drama. 


NOTES   TO   CHAPTEK  X 

1.  Page  250.  Mr.  Froude's  account  of  the  Pilgrimage  of  Grace  is 
perhaps  the  most  brilliant  production  of  his  skilful  pen.  History  of 
England,  vol.  ii.  chaps,  xiii.  and  xiv.  KeWs  Rebellion  in  Norfolk,  by 
the  Kev.  F.  W.  Russell,  Longmans,  1859,  is  a  respectable  compilation, 
the  result  of  some  little  research.  For  the  Cornish  Rebellion,  see 
Froude,  vol.  v.  ch.  26. 

2.  Page  252.  My  authorities  for  the  statements  in  this  paragraph 
are  to  be  found  in  Mr.  Cartwright's  Chapters  on  the  History  of  Yorkshire, 
Wakefield,  1872  ;  Bell's  Huntingdon  Peerage  Case,  London,  dto,  1820 ; 
Harl.  MSS.  6992,  art.  26,  p.  50;  Morris's  Troubles  of  our  Catholic 
Forefathers,  series  iii.  passim;  Challoner's  Missionary  Priests,  vol.  i. ; 
Fuller's  Church  History,  b.  vi.  s.  vi.  §  7  ;  Calendar  of  State  Papers, 
Domestic,  Add.  1580-1625,  pp.  11-13.  On  the  subject  of  persecution  in 
the  north,  cf .  Peck's  Desiderata  Curiosa,  lib.  iii.  §  9,  etc. 

3.  Page  253.     Challoner's  Priests,  vol.  i.  pp.  110,  113.     Morris,  u.s. 

4.  Page  254.  The  story  of  Margaret  Clitherow  has  been  investigated 
with  very  great  labour  and  research  by  Mr.  Morris,  in  whose  book 
{Troubles,  u.s.  s.  iii.)  all  the  horrible  details  may  be  found.  The 
particulars  are  given  from  the  still  existing  Records  of  the  City  of  York. 

5.  Page  256.  Yepez,  Hist.  Partic.  p.  680;  P.  R.  0.,  Domestic,  Eliza- 
beth, vol.  249,  n.  12,  §  15. 

6.  Page  256.  Harl.  MSS.  6996,  art.  19.  Lord  Huntingdon's  letter  is 
dated  2  October,  1593. 

7.  Page  256.  Challoner  gives  the  date  4th  December,  1593,  but  this  is 
clearly  wrong.  Topcliffe  in  his  letter  to  Puckering  says  it  was  "about 
a  fortnight  before  Christmas." 

8.  Page  257.  Domestic,  Elizabeth,  vol.  247,  art.  21.  Harl  BISS. 
6996,  art.  40,  p.  78. 

9.  Page  258.    Domestic,  Elizabeth,  vol.  242,  arts.  121,  122,  125. 

10.  Page  258.     Walpole  Letters,  p.  19. 

270 


ONE   GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE    271 

11.  Fage  259.  The  conferences  were  printed  in  the  Irhli  Ecclesias- 
tical  Record  for  June  1873. 

12.  Page  261.  Harl.  MSS.  6996,  art.  28. 

13.  Page  261.  Cal.  P.  R.  0.,  Domestic,  Elizabeth,  1591-4. 

14.  Page  262.  Domestic,  Elizabeth,  vol.  247,  art.  21. 

15.  Page  263.  Harl.  MSS.  6996,  art.  35. 

16.  Page  267.  There  is  a  very  full  account  of  Holtby  in  Morris's 
Troubles,  series  iii.  He  frequently  went  under  the  name  of  Duckett. 
Some  interesting  notices  of  him  are  to  be  found  in  The  Life  of  Mrs. 
Dorothy  Lawson  of  St.  Antonyms,  London,  Dolman,  1855. 

17.  Page  268.  Yepez,  Hist.  Particular,  p.  685  et  seq.  I  must 
remind  my  readers  that  Bp.  Yepez  published  his  work  less  than  four 
years  after  Henry  Walpole^s  execution.  It  is  astonishing  how  accurate 
his  information  was.  In  the  minutest  particulars  I  have  again  and 
again  found  him  corroborated  by  the  evidence  lately  brought  to  light 
from  the  contemporary  documents  in  the  Kecord  Office  and  elsewhere. 

18.  Page  269.    Harl.  3ISS.  6996,  art.  37,  page  72. 


CHAPTER   XI 


THE   TOWER   AND    THE   RACK 


While  Henry  Walpole  was  going  through  his  preliminary- 
ordeal  in  York  Castle,  disputing  with  crafty  trimmers  and 
sour  Puritans  on  matters  of  theology  one  day  and  writing 
flimsy  tracts  another,  but  always  entangling  himself  more 
and  more  hopelessly  in  the  meshes  of  the  net  that  had 
closed  around  him,  a  very  curious  drama  was  being  acted 
in  London  which  exercised  an  important  influence  upon  his 
fate. 

Robert  Earl  of  Essex  had  for  some  time  past  been  recog- 
nised as  the  chief  favourite  of  the  Queen.  He  was  now  in 
his  twenty-sixth  year,  with  a  handsome  person,  abilities  of 
a  high  order,  and  many  qualifications  for  ensuring  him 
success  as  a  courtier.  Lavish  with  his  money,  fond  of  dis- 
play, a  firm  and  zealous  friend,  chivalrous,  romantic,  and 
brave  to  the  point  of  recklessness,  he  attracted  to  himself 
the  admiration  and  regard  of  generous  enthusiasts,  while 
sagacious  and  wily  sycophants  knew  how  to  turn  to  good 
account  the  enormous  arrogance  and  immeasurable  self- 
confidence  which  in  the  end  brought  him  to  the  scaffold. 
At  his  father's  death  in  1576  the  young  earl  was  in  his 
eighth  year,  and  at  that  father's  special  request  he  was 
committed  to  the  guardianship  of  Lord  Burghley,  of  whose 
house  he  continued  for  some  time  an  inmate,  having  as  his 
constant  playmate  young  Robert  Cecil,  then  a  lad  of  some 
twelve  or  thirteen.^  In  1584  he  made  his  first  appearance 
at  court,  and  at  once  became  the  darling  of  the  Queen. 
But  his  royal  mistress's  caresses,  showered  upon  him   in 

season  and  out  of  season,  not  without  some  scandal,  could 

272 


ONE  GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE      273 

not  content  him  long,  and  he  was  hardly  eighteen  when  he 
became  a  suitor  for  the  Mastership  of  the  Horse,  which  he 
obtained,  not  so  much  by  reason  of  any  fitness  for  the  post 
which  the  Queen  had  observed  in  him,  but  rather  by  his 
ceaseless  and  petulant  importunity.  Passionately  eager  to 
win  some  renown  in  war,  he  vainly  applied  for  military 
command,  and  on  this  being  refused  him  he  slipped  away 
from  court  when  the  Portugal  expedition  sailed  in  1589, 
and,  putting  out  to  sea  from  Falmouth  about  the  same  time 
as  the  fleet  weighed  anchor  at  Plymouth,  he  fell  in  with  it 
at  last  off  the  coast  of  Portugal,  and  w^hen  the  attack  upon 
Peniche  was  made  Essex  was  the  first  to  land,  leaping  into 
the  surf  and  wading  breast  high  under  the  fire  of  the 
enemy's  guns.  At  Lisbon  he  loudly  challenged  any  of  the 
garrison  to  come  forth  and  "  break  a  lance  "  with  him;  at 
Cascaes  he  "sent  a  cartel"  offering  himself  against  any 
Spaniard  of  equal  quality ;  on  the  4th  of  June  he  was 
summoned  to  return  to  England  by  a  peremptory  and 
indignant  letter  from  the  Queen.  No  sooner  had  he  got 
back  to  court  than  he  picked  a  quarrel  with  Sir  Charles 
Blount,  for  no  other  reason  than  because  Sir  Charles  was 
rising  in  favour  at  court,  and  in  the  encounter  that  ensued 
he  was  disarmed  and  wounded  in  the  thigh.  In  1591  he 
obtained  at  last  the  desire  of  his  heart,  and  was  sent  with 
an  auxiliary  force  to  assist  Henry  IV.  in  Normandy. 
When  in  obedience  to  orders  he  was  preparing  once  more 
for  his  return  from  an  expedition  which  had  brought  little 
honour  and  no  profit,  he  again  sent  a  challenge  to  Villars, 
the  Governor  of  Kouen,  couched  in  terms  not  a  whit  less 
ridiculous  than  the  Knight  of  La  Mancha  might  have  used.- 
Thus  far  his  career  had  been  other  than  successful,  and 
he  began  to  suspect  that  for  him  the  road  to  fame  was  not 
to  be  carved  out  by  the  sword.  A  new  direction  was  given 
to  his  ambition  when,  at  the  death  of  his  father-in-law,  the 
Secretary  Walsingham,  it  became  clear  that  Lord  Burghley 
and  his  son  Sir  Eobert  Cecil  were  at  the  council  table 
almost  supreme.  Death  had  played  havoc  among  the  great 
men  who  had  lived  through  the  danger  of  the  ' '  Invincible 

18 


274  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

Armada."  Leicester  had  survived  it  but  a  few  weeks, 
Walsingham  died  in  April  1590,  in  November  of  the  same 
year  George  Talbot,  Earl  of  Shrewsbury,  died,  and  a  year 
after  Sir  Christopher  Hatton.  Lord  Shrewsbury  was  Earl 
Marshal,  Hatton  was  Chancellor  of  the  University  of 
Oxford ;  Essex  with  passionate  eagerness  claimed  both 
posts  of  honour.  He  gained  neither  the  one  nor  the  other. 
Lord  Buckhurst  succeeded  to  the  chancellorship,  the  other 
office  was  kept  vacant  for  years.  Essex  was  stung  to  the 
quick,  his  pride  was  wounded,  and  he  thought  that  the 
Cecils  were  alone  to  blame  for  his  failure.  How  had  they 
foiled  him  ?  How  but  by  intrigue  ?  Henceforth  he  would 
turn  their  own  weapons  against  them  and  try  to  outwit 
them  in  policy. 

The  Secretary  Walsingham  had  for  years  had  a  little 
army  of  spies  in  his  pay — wretches  of  blasted  character  and 
broken  fortunes,  fellows  who  were  adepts  at  inventing  plots 
or  worming  out  secrets,  their  trade  eavesdropping,  their 
daily  bread  gained  by  scenting  out  ''murders,  stratagems, 
and  crimes  "  ;  where  true  intelligence  was  not  to  be  gained, 
false  rumours  and  slanders  of  the  blackest  hue  served  their 
turn  as  well.  Sometimes  they  were  hot  in  the  chase  of  a 
cracked-brained  Familist ;  sometimes  they  were  dogging 
the  steps  of  decrepit  old  "Queen  Mary's  priests";  some- 
times they  were  busy  in  forging  letters  from  people  in  high 
station  ;  but  always  sleepless,  suspicious,  unscrupulous — 
men  of  infinite  resources  in  the  base  expedients  of  the 
informer's  trade. 3  Walsingham's  death  had  been  a  sad 
blow  to  this  miserable  gang,  and  the  execution  of  Mary 
Stuart  had  even  before  his  death  lessened  the  demand  for 
their  services.  When  Essex  determined  to  play  his  new 
role  there  was  a  stir  among  the  band  of  "  intelligencers," 
as  they  called  themselves,  who  were  on  the  look  out  for  an 
employer.  Essex  with  his  usual  rashness  took  man  after 
man  into  his  pay,  and  set  himself  to  outdo  his  rivals  by 
attempting  to  get  such  secret  information  from  abroad  as 
should  anticipate  that  supplied  to  his  rivals.  He  spared  no 
expense ;  lavish  as  ever,  he  imagined  it  was  only  a  question 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  275 

of  money,  and  that,  provided  he  paid  liberally,  he  might 
dispense  with  the  necessity  of  all  caution  and  of  the  sagacity 
in  discriminating  between  the  true  and  the  false,  which  only 
long  practice  and  years  of  training  in  diplomacy  can  supply. 
Again  he  found  himself  foiled  :  the  cool  judgment  and  long 
discipline  of  Lord  Burghley  and  his  son  were  more  than  a 
match  for  him.  Lord  Burghley's  health  began  to  fail,  but 
his  son  had  not  served  his  apprenticeship  in  vain  ;  Sir 
Eobert  Cecil  held  his  ground  against  Essex,  and  proved  the 
abler  man.  Irritated  beyond  endurance,  and  in  a  mood  to 
believe  anything  that  might  establish  his  character  for 
acuteness,  Essex  was  in  that  excited  state  when  a  man's 
judgment  is  least  to  be  trusted,  and  when  the  burning  desire 
to  make  some  discovery  leads  him  to  see  all  things  through 
a  false  medium.  At  last  the  hour  came  when  he  was  sure 
that  he  had  possessed  himself  of  a  real  secret,  and  that  he 
had  found  out  a  real  plot. 

There  was  a  certain  Eoderigo  Lopez,  a  Portuguese,  who 
for  some  years  had  practised  as  a  medical  man  in  London, 
and  had  attained  to  such  eminence  in  his  profession  that  he 
had  been  sworn  physician  to  the  Queen.  He  had  already 
amassed  a  considerable  fortune,  and  no  breath  of  suspicion 
had  hitherto  lighted  upon  him.4  In  November  1593  certain 
of  Essex's  gang  of  intelligencers  cast  their  eyes  upon  this 
Lopez,  and  denounced  him  to  the  Earl  as  one  engaged  in 
an  attempt  to  assassinate  his  royal  mistress.  Manuel 
Andrada,  a  miscreant  "  discovered  to  have  practised  the 
death  of  Don  Antonio,"  and  whose  life  Lopez  had  himself 
saved;  Manuel  Lewis  Tinoco,  "one  that  had  twice  betrayed 
the  King  Don  Antonio  his  master;"  Ferera  de  Gama, 
'*  sometimes  a  man  of  great  livelihood  and  wealth  in  Portu- 
gal, which  he  did  forego  in  adhering  to  Don  Antonio,  .  .  . 
but  some  years  since  secretly  won  to  the  service  of  the  King 
of  Spain  " — these  were  the  witnesses  upon  whom  Essex's 
spies  relied.  In  January  1594  Lopez  was  arrested  and 
examined  by  Essex  and  the  Cecils,  and  his  house  searched. 
Lord  Burghley  and  his  son  reported  decidedly  in  Lopez's 
favour ;  Elizabeth  laughed  at  the  whole  story,  and  with 


276  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


some  scorn  called  Essex  "  a  rash  and  temerarious  youth." 
Essex  was  furious.     He  shut  himself  up  in  his  chamber, 
and  refused  to  come  forth  ;   swore  that  some  "  atonement  " 
should  be  made  for  the  wrong  done  him,  and  insisted  that 
another  inquiry  should  be  instituted,  and  that   the   Lord 
High  Admiral  should  be  associated  with  him  and  the  Cecils 
in  the  next  examination. s     He  gained  his  point.     The  three 
witnesses  deserved  hanging  as  much  as  any  men  in  Europe, 
yet  they  vehemently  denied  at  the  outset  that  they  were  in 
any  way  cognisant  of  any  plot,  and  knew  nothing  of  Lopez's 
guilt;  but   then  the  "manacles  were  shown"  to  Tinoco, 
and  with  a  shudder  of  fear  he  was  ready  for  any  confession 
that  might   be   put   into   his  mouth.     The   rest   followed. 
Lopez  shrieked  forth  in  an  agony  of  terror  his  protestations 
of  innocence  till  his  vehemence  provoked  the  laughter  of 
the  court  of  inquiry.^     Ferera  and  Andrada  strove  only  to 
save  themselves,  and  Lopez,  in  the  vain  hope  of  his  life 
being  spared,  made  foolish  admissions,  and  in  his  despera- 
tion and  horror  became  more  and  more  entangled.     His 
doom  was  sealed,  and  Essex  had  his  way;  the  four  men 
were  kept  in  prison  for  three  long  months,  in  the  hope  of 
some  further  discoveries ;  when  these  failed  three  of  them 
were    sent   to   the   scaffold   without  remorse.      Of   course 
Lopez's  property  was  confiscated,  but  Ferera  was  spared  to 
accompany  Essex  into  Spain  some   years  after,  and  in  a 
memorial    which    he   addressed    to    his   patron    in    1597 
"  desired  his  lordship  to  remember  the  words  which  he  had 
said  to  him  in  the  Tower  of  London,  upon  the  confession 
of  Lopez."  7 

As  I  have  said,  this  business  of  Eoderigo  Lopez  could  not 
but  exercise  an  important  influence  upon  Henry  Walpole's 
fate ;  he  had  but  lately  returned  from  Spain,  he  had  been 
admitted  to  the  presence  of  Philip  IL,  he  had  enjoyed 
familiar  intercourse  with  all  the  nobles  of  the  Spanish  court, 
whose  names  had  been  brought  forward  and  made  dexterous 
use  of  in  the  accounts  of  the  conspiracy ;  if  this  Jesuit  Father, 
clearly  a  man  of  mark,  could  not  throw  some  light  upon  this 
business,  who  could?     If  the  "plot"  was  genuine,  it  could 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  277 


hardly  have  been  kept  so  very  secret,  when  the  emissaries 
were  broken-down  adventurers  and  common  informers  with 
no  characters  to  lose.  A  confession  was  extorted  from  the 
wretched  Lopez  on  the  25th  February.  On  that  very  day 
Henry  Walpole  started  on  his  journey  to  London,  he  was 
placed  under  the  custody  of  Topcliffe,  and  at  this  point  his 
real  sufferings  began.  Topcliffe's  coarse  brutality  showed 
itself  from  the  first;  the  journey  to  London  appears  to  have 
been  made  with  all  possible  haste,  probably  with  the  inten- 
tion of  producing  Walpole  as  a  witness  upon  the  trial  of 
Lopez,  which  took  place  upon  the  28th.  All  along  the  road 
Topcliffe  gave  out  that  he  had  got  under  his  charge  a 
notable  Jesuit,  who  was  privy  to  the  plot  to  assassinate  the 
Queen  ;  and  no  insult  or  outrage  was  omitted  which  might 
aggravate  his  sufferings.  Lopez's  trial  was  over  before  they 
reached  London,  and  Walpole  was  at  once  committed  to 
the  Tower.s 

There  were  in  the  Tower  at  this  time  fifteen  or  sixteen 
notable  prisoners,  of  whom  five  at  least  had  been  already 
condemned  to  death.  Philip  Howard,  Earl  of  Arundel,  had 
been  put  upon  his  trial  just  five  years  before,  his  crime 
being  that  he  had  attempted  to  abjure  the  realm,  in  the 
hope  of  obtaining  liberty  of  conscience  elsewhere.  This 
was  enough  to  serve  as  the  ground  for  arraigning  him  upon 
a  charge  of  high  treason  ;  and  in  those  days  to  be  charged 
with  such  a  crime  was  to  be  condemned.  The  earl  was, 
however,  never  executed  ;  for  six  years  he  was  kept  in  close 
confinement,  his  health  gradually  failing,  and  he  died  in  his 
prison  on  the  19th  October,  1595.  Dr.  Lopez,  too,  was 
lying  there  under  sentence  of  death,  and  with  him  the  man 
who  had  been  induced  to  accuse  him  ;  and  ''  John  Annias, 
an  Irishman,  who  came  over  under  pretence  of  killing 
{sic)  Antonio  Perez  ;  "  and  James  Fitzgerald,  son  of  the 
unfortunate  Earl  of  Desmond;  and  Peter  Wentworth 
"  committed  from  the  Parliament,"  his  offence  being  that 
he  hadipresumed  to  speak  in  the  House  of  Commons  on 
the  subject  of  the  succession  to  the  crown. 9 

But  the  prisoner  whom  of  all  others   Henry  Walpole 


278  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

would  most  have  wished  to  hold  converse  with  at  such 
a  time,  if  it  had  been  permitted  him,  was  Eobert  Southwell ; 
he  too,  the  son  of  a  substantial  Norfolk  squire,  who  in 
1578  had  entered  the  Society  of  Jesus,  had  returned  to 
England  in  1586,  and  since  then  had  spent  five  years  in  the 
house  of  the  Countess  of  Arundel.  Southwell  had  been  in 
the  Tower  for  about  two  years,  after  being  barbarously 
tortured  in  Topcliffe's  house  in  Westminster,  and  was  now 
lying  in  daily  expectation  of  being  tried ; — for  his  torture 
and  his  long  imprisonment  had  been  before  any  such  trial. ^° 
"Whether  he  and  Walpole  ever  met  we  cannot  tell,  but  the 
probability  is  that  both  men  were  kept  in  too  close  custody 
to  allow  of  their  exchanging  many  words,  though  there  is 
some  presumption  that  they  did  contrive  to  communicate 
with  each  other,  and  that  this  communication  had  its 
influence  upon  the  confessions  which  were  in  the  end 
extorted. 

Henry  Walpole  remained  for  nearly  two  months  in 
solitary  confinement;  the  "close  prisoners"  were  permitted 
to  hold  no  intercourse  with  the  outer  world ;  they  were 
subject  to  be  treated  with  infinite  brutality  by  their  jailers  ; 
allowed  nothing  but  mouldy  straw  to  lie  on ;  liable  to 
be  robbed  of  anything  that  was  upon  their  persons  that  was 
worth  taking,  and  furnished  with  scarcely  sufficient  to  keep 
life  in  their  bodies."  Two  months  of  such  treatment  were 
usually  long  enough  to  break  even  a  brave  man's  spirit, 
and  to  weaken  whatever  resolution  and  courage  he  might 
have  been  able  to  summon  to  his  aid  in  better  times.  With 
a  constitution  shaken,  and  with  an  emaciated  frame,  the 
man  who  could  hold  out  against  the  terrors  of  the  torture 
chamber  or  the  physical  agony  of  the  rack,  the  scavenger's 
daughter,  or  the  gauntlets,  would  be  a  man  of  very  extra- 
ordinary power  indeed,  both  of  body  and  mind. 

At  last,  on  the  14th  of  April,  the  notorious  Eichard 
Young,  a  creature  whose  life  was  spent  in  hunting  up  priests 
and  torturing  them,  and  who  disputed  the  palm  of  cruelty 
with  Topclifi'e,  wrote  to  the  Lord  Keeper  Puckering 
suggesting  that  an  order  should  be  given  him  to  examine 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  279 


certain   prisoners   in   the   Tower  who  had    "  long   lain   in 
oblivion,    and   by   delay   and   lingering   matters    of    great 
importance    are    hurt    and   hid."^^'     In    Southwell's    case 
Topcliffe  had  got    himself    into   trouble    by    torturing   his 
victim    to    the    extent    of    getting    talked    about.      Young 
had  the  cunning  to  provide  against  any  chance  of  incur- 
ring blame ;  and  in    this    same    letter    he    begs    that   Mr. 
Beale  and  Sir  Thomas  Wilkes,  clerks  of  the  Privy  Council, 
might  be  associated  with  him  in  the  work,  together  with 
some  counsel  at  law.     The  suggestion  was  not  immediately 
acted  on,  but  on  the  27th  of  the  month  Henry  Walpole  was 
subjected   to   his   first   examination,    not    before    Richard 
Young,  but  before  Serjeant  Drewe,   Sir  Edward  Coke,   the 
Attorney- General,  and  Richard  Topcliffe.'3     The  inquisitors, 
as  they  might  well  be  called,  appear  to  have  conducted 
their  examination  in  a  very  methodical  manner.     They  had 
before  them  the  previous  admissions  which  Henry  Walpole 
had  made  at  York,  the  information  furnished  by  Thomas 
Walpole,  and  the  confessions  of  one  of  the  many  vagabond 
informers.     This  man  was  an  Irishman  named  Hugh  Cahill : 
he  had  fallen  in  with  the  Walpoles  at  Calais,  and  being 
in  bad  health  and  great  poverty  had  applied  to  the  brothers 
for  assistance  and  thrown  himself  upon  their  compassion. 
Of   course  he   had   pretended  to  be  a  Catholic  who  was 
suffering  for  his  religion,  and  of  course  he  had  been  relieved  : 
equally  of  course  he  had  made  the  best  of  his  way  across 
the  Channel,   and   presented   himself  at  Burghley  House 
with  such  information  as  he  had  to  give,  supplementing  it 
with  such  additions  and  embellishments  as  he  could  invent. 
The  fellow  could  not  write    his  name,  but  he    was  ready 
to  add  his  mark  to   any  document  which  Topcliffe  might 
think  proper  to  lay  before  him.     There  was  another  scoun- 
drel of  the  same  type,  a  confederate  of  Cahill's,  who  was 
also  ready  with  his  contribution  of  information.     He  too 
had  fallen  in    with   the   Walpoles    and   been   assisted    by 
them,  and  he  too  was  anxious  to  make  his  account  out  of 
his  previous  acquaintance  with    a   prisoner  against  whom 
it  was  desirable  to  collect  some  damaging  evidence. '-^ 


28o  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

The  inquiries  addressed  to  the  prisoner  in  the  Tower 
on  this  27th  of  April  were  evidently  based  upon  the 
admissions  and  confessions  gathered  from  all  these  sources. 
Henry  Walpole,  in  reply  to  the  interrogatories,  admitted 
that  he  was  a  Jesuit,  that  he  had  met  Cahill  at  Calais,  and 
lodged  at  the  same  inn,  the  Plume  Blanche ;  that  he  had 
gone  to  Spain  and  had  an  interview  with  Philip  II.  at  the 
Escurial,  had  talked  with  this  one  and  that  one,  noble  and 
gentle,  lay  and  cleric;  that  he  had  landed  in  Yorkshire 
furnished  with  letters,  the  greater  part  of  which  he  had 
destroyed — some  he  had  hidden  under  a  stone,  as  has  been 
already  told ;  and  that  his  only  object  in  returning  to 
England  was  to  preach  the  doctrines  of  the  proscribed 
faith  and  win  souls  to  the  Catholic  cause.  So  far  so  good. 
Here  was  abundance  of  information,  if  only  the  Govern- 
ment could  make  any  use  of  it.  Unfortunately  there  was 
not  a  single  item  that  was  not  perfectly  well  known  already  ; 
and  though  the  "  examinate  "  had  told  them  a  great  deal 
about  a  number  of  conspicuous  personages,  these  were  all 
far  out  of  harm's  way  and  safe  in  Spain  or  Belgium  or 
France.  But  Walpole  had  been  at  the  new  seminary  of 
Valladolid,  and  had  received  certain  "labels"  to  serve  as 
a  pass  for  some  Englishman  at  Dunkirk.  He  had  said, 
too,  that  at  Valladolid  there  were  some  forty  young 
Englishmen  pursuing  their  studies  :  these  were  the  sons  of 
men  of  substance  and  position  at  home.  Who  were  these 
forty  young  students  ?  Who  was  this  Englishman  at 
Dunkirk?  If  he  answered  these  questions,  the  prisoner 
would  have  been  bringing  others  into  jeopardy.  Pressed 
to  name  these,  he  flatly  refused :  they  could  get  no  more 
from  him. 

A  formal  report  of  the  examination  was  drawn  up — the 
whole  business  must  have  taken  some  hours — and  Henry 
Walpole  and  the  three  commissioners  appended  their  names 
to  the  document,  and  the  first  examination  came  to  an  end. 
The  prisoner  was  taken  back  to  his  cell ;  he  occupied  him- 
self in  drawing  pictures  of  saints  and  angels  upon  the  walls 
and  ceiling,  and  in  carving  his  name  on  the  stone,  where  it 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  281 


remains  to  the  present  hour.  It  is  piteous  to  contrast  the 
bold  firm  cutting  of  the  first  with  the  ragged  and  unshapely 
look  of  the  last  letters,  as  if  the  hands  had  gradually  lost 
their  power  or  he  who  guided  them  had  gradually  lost  his 
control. 

On  the  3rd  of  May  Henry  Walpole  was  again  brought 
up  for  examination.  This  time  only  two  commissioners 
were  present,  Topcliffe  and  Serjeant  Drewe.  The  questions 
addressed  to  him  were  aimed  almost  exclusively  at  extort- 
ing such  names  as  it  was  in  his  power  to  disclose.  What 
were  the  contents  of  the  letters  destroyed  ?  He  would  not 
tell.  What  were  the  names  of  two  gentlemen  mentioned  in 
a  certain  letter  to  which  allusion  had  been  made?  **  He 
knoweth  but  refuseth  to  disclose."  He  had  been  directed 
to  a  house  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  "  but  he  utterly  denieth 
to  disclose  the  name  of  the  owner  of  the  said  house,  or  of 
the  gent,  to  whom  he  was  directed  .  .  .  refuseth  for  con- 
science' sake  (as  he  sayeth)  to  reveal  the  same."  At  this 
point  the  first  dreadful  pressure  seems  to  have  been  used. 
The  questions  were  repeated,  and  Topcliffe  had  his  victim 
almost  to  himself.  The  ghastly  instruments  of  torture  were 
ready  at  hand — the  rack  and  the  manacles — those  dreadful 
manacles  that  would  stretch  every  sinew  and  wrench  the  arms 
from  their  sockets.  Let  him  speak,  this  stubborn  Jesuit, 
who  knew  so  much  ! — speak,  or  hang  till  life  should  be  only 
horrible  torment.  Was  the  gentleman's  name  in  Lincoln's 
Inn  Field's,  French  ?  Was  it  a  white  house  ?  He  would 
not  answer.  Hang  him  up  again  !  "  Being  asked  again 
of  the  gentleman  which  was  of  acquaintance  with  this 
examinate,  as  with  the  said  Edward  Walpole,  he  refuseth 
to  disclose  his  name."  Again  and  again  the  questions  were 
pressed.  Was  Braddox  in  Essex  one  of  the  houses  set 
down  in  his  directions  ?  Was  Spiller  one  of  his  names  ? 
Was  Mrs.  White  ?  And  so  on.  Where  he  could  answer 
that  such  names  were  not  in  his  list  he  said  so ;  where  he 
could  not,  he  was  obstinately  silent  or  stubbornly  refused 
to  tell.  The  probability  is  that  this  examination  only  came 
to  an  end  by  the  prisoner  fainting  under  the  torture,  or  the 


282  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

examiners  becoming  convinced  that  nothing  more  was  to 
be  got  out  of  him  tliat  time.  But  they  could  afford  to  wait. 
It  was  only  a  question  of  time.  Topcliffe's  long  experience 
had  already  made  him  acquainted  with  the  terrible  physio- 
logical fact  that  pain  rarely  kills,  and  he  had  no  scruples 
about  trying  its  power  of  crushing  a  man's  spirit  and 
breaking  his  heart.  It  is  probable  that  the  prisoner  was  too 
much  exhausted  by  the  effects  of  his  sufferings  on  the  last 
occasion  of  his  examination  to  allow  of  any  further  torture 
being  applied  to  him,  until  some  time  were  given  to  recover 
from  the  frightful  strain  which  his  system  had  endured. 
At  any  rate  a  fortnight  elapsed  before  he  was  subjected  to 
another  ordeal.  But  on  the  18th  of  May  Serjeant  Drewe 
and  Topcliffe  were  once  more  at  the  Tower,  and  Henry 
Walpole  was  again  brought  before  them.  They  began  at 
the  point  where  they  had  left  off — "  What  those  two  men 
were  to  whom  he  was  directed  to  use  their  aid  in  Ireland  ?  " 
The  answer  was  as  before,  "  he  refuseth  to  utter  their 
names."  Topcliffe  hereupon  seems  to  have  produced  some 
of  the  papers  which  Thomas  Walpole  had  given  up,  and 
upon  these  papers  the  examination  proceeded.  The 
names  of  certain  gentlemen  in  Norfolk,  Essex,  and  Suffolk 
were  asked  for,  and  still  refused.  His  Spanish  journey  was 
reverted  to.  On  this  point  he  was  ready  to  tell  them  all 
he  knew,  but  when  again  they  pressed  him  to  betray  the 
places  of  residence  of  certain  persons  whose  names  Topcliffe 
mentioned,  and  which  had  been  found  upon  the  papers 
produced,  it  was  as  before  :  they  might  hang  him  up  by  the 
manacles,  but  he  would  not  yield.  The  pair  of  worthies 
left  their  victim,  having  gained  little  or  nothing.  So  far 
he  had  been  able  to  bear  the  agony  bravely.  Another 
respite  was  allowed  him,  but  it  was  plain  that  flesh  and 
blood  could  not  bear  these  horrible  examinations  much 
longer.  This  man  had  been  and  was  ready  to  sacrifice  all 
hopes  of  an  earthly  career,  and  all  that  most  men  value 
most  highly.  Honour  and  fame  and  wealth  had  long  ceased 
to  have  any  attraction  for  him :  no  bribe  that  this  world 
could  present  would  have  tempted  him  for  a  moment;  but 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  283 


the  horrors  of  that  dark  dungeon,  the  presence  of  those 
ghastly  instruments  of  torture,  the  immeasurable  agony  of 
wrenched  joints  and  strained  sinews,  the  spasm  succeeding 
spasm,  and  the  swoon  from  which  he  was  awakened  only  to 
be  racked  again,  the  certainty  that  he  was  in  the  power 
of  men  in  whom  there  was  no  more  pity  than  in  the  stone 
walls  that  re-echoed  his  groans, — all  this  proved  too 
strong  for  human  resolve,  and  he  gave  way.  It  was,  as 
I  have  said,  only  a  question  of  time  :  each  repetition  of  the 
torture  must  needs  have  weakened  the  power  of  resistance. 
The  wonder  in  such  a  case  is,  not  that  he  broke  down  at 
last,  but  that  he  endured  so  long. 

His  next  examination  was  on  the  4th  June.  This  time 
he  was  not  left  to  the  tender  mercies  of  Topcliffe  and  Drewe 
alone,  nor  does  it  appear  that  any  torture  was  applied. 
His  two  former  examiners  were  present,  but  they  were 
held  in  check  by  the  presence  of  Sir  Edward  Coke,  the 
Attorney-General,  "  Justice  Yung,"  Robert  Beale,  the  Clerk 
to  the  Privy  Council,  Sir  Henry  Killigrew,  and  Sir  Michael 
Blount,  the  Lieutenant  of  the  Tower,  seven  in  all.  The 
report  to  which  their  names  are  appended  is  very  short. ^5 
All  that  Henry  Walpole  is  represented  as  confessing  is 
that  he  had  received  directions  at  Valladolid  in  July  1593, 
from  Claudius  Aquaviva,  to  proceed  to  England  and  to  put 
himself  under  the  orders  of  his  superior,  Father  Garnet ; 
that  he  had  intended  to  arrive  in  London,  and  had  actually 
landed  in  England  in  December  last.  This  document  was 
doubtless  intended  to  serve  as  evidence  upon  the  trial,  and 
it  appears  that  Sir  Edward  Coke  had  already  made  some 
preparation  for  the  prosecution  which  it  was  intended  at 
this  time  to  proceed  with.^^ 

On  the  10th  of  June  Coke  addressed  a  note  to  the  Lord 
Keeper  Puckering,  giving  an  abstract  of  the  depositions 
which  had  been  laid  before  him  touching  the  cases  of  Henry 
Walpole  and  half  a  dozen  other  prisoners.  Of  course  the 
document  is  a  mere  case  for  the  plaintiff,  in  which  all  that 
makes  in  Walpole's  favour  is  kept  back  and  all  that  makes 
against  him  is  made  the  most  of ;  but  Coke  plainly  shows 


284  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

that  so  far  there  was  no  case  at  all  against  him,  except 
on  the  ground  of  his  having  come  back  to  England  after 
receiving  Orders  from  the  Church  of  Eome  beyond  sea. 
In  fact,  the  attempt  to  fasten  any  other  charge  upon  him 
had  quite  broken  down.  But  he  was  now  in  Topcliffe's 
hands.  On  the  13th  the  commissioners  were  at  the  Tower 
once  more, — Drewe,  Young,  and  Topcliffe  of  course.  Miles 
Sandes,  Clerk  of  the  Crown  of  the  King's  Bench,  and  this 
time  not  Sir  Edward  Coke,  but  his  rival  Francis  Bacon. 
Topcliffe,  we  may  be  sure,  had  not  spared  his  victim,  and 
when  the  examiners  appeared  Topcliffe  triumphantly 
handed  in  a  confession  which  Henry  Walpole  had  written 
with  his  own  hand ;  and  yet  it  is  a  confession  which  does 
him  some  little  honour.  He  tells  of  Captain  Jaques,  Sir 
William  Stanley's  second  in  command,  having  on  one 
occasion  sounded  him  upon  the  subject  of  the  lawfulness 
of  assassinating  the  Queen;  "to  whom,"  says  he,  "I 
answered  that  for  all  the  good  in  the  world  I  would  not 
counsel  any  such  attempt."  He  tells  of  a  conversation 
with  Parsons  on  the  same  subject,  when  Parsons  had 
replied  "that  Catholics,  and  chiefly  we  religious  men, 
ought  to  suffer  violence,  but  offer  none,  chiefly  to  princes ; 
and  he  added  that  other  means  were  by  persuasion  and 
prayer,  and  that  though  it  were  not  presently,  yet  no  doubt 
the  seminaries  would  at  length  reduce  England  to  the 
faith."  And  then  he  adds,  "  For  mine  own  part  I  protest 
before  God,  as  I  have  often,  that  I  abhor  to  think  thereof, 
and  never  did  nor  would  not  move  any  man  thereunto  for 
all  the  good  in  the  world,  Jesus  is  my  witness  !  " 

After  this  he  goes  on  to  give  a  minute  account  of  his  life 
during  the  last  few  years,  of  his  journey  to  Spain,  of  his 
return  to  Flanders,  of  his  interviews  with  a  number  of 
people  whom  he  names,  of  his  commission  to  go  to  Eng- 
land and  put  himself  under  the  direction  of  Garnet,  the 
Superior  of  the  Jesuits,  and  meanwhile  to  do  his  best  in 
bringing  over  "  fitting  youths  to  the  seminaries."  From 
this  he  passes  on  to  tell  all  he  knew  of  Stanley  and  his 
doings.     He  had  not  seen  him  for  some  years,  but  he  tells 


i 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  285 

how  Stanley  had  written  to  him  "  to  deal  with  some  priest 
that  might  get  access  to  my  Lord  Strange,   now  Earl  of 
Derby,  to  induce  him  to  the  Catholic  religion  .  .  .  and  he 
added  that  Mr.  John  Gerard  he  thought  were  a  fit  man 
thereunto."     More  intelligence  follows  ;  it  is  mere  gossip  of 
what  he  had  heard  in  this  place  and  that  place,  and  he 
expresses  his  belief  that  there  is  nothing  to  fear  from  the 
Spaniards  now.     And  this  was  all  that  he  had  to  tell  of 
conspiracies  or  treasons  abroad.     When  this  confession  was 
handed  in,  it  was  accompanied  by  a  running  commentary 
in  the  margin,  which  may  still  be  read,  in  Topcliflfe's  hand. 
The    object    is   plainly  to    prejudice    the    minds    of  the 
examiners   against   Walpole,   and    to    suggest    that    there 
was   still    something   kept   back.     So  there   was.     Henry 
Walpole  even  yet  had  not   betrayed  his  friends,  nor  had 
he  yet  disclosed  even  a  single  name  or  a  single  fact  which 
was  not  perfectly  well  known  to  the  Government.     But  he 
was  not  to  be  allowed  to  stop  at  this  point.     He  had  told 
all  he  knew  of  things  beyond  the  sea.     What  did  he  know 
of  things  at  home  ?     What  of  Garnet  ?     What  of  the  Earl 
of   Arundel?     What   of   those   to  whom  he   had   brought 
letters  ?     Who  were  those  scholars  at  Seville  and  Valla- 
dolid  ?     Of  Garnet  he  had  still  nothing  to  tell ;  in  fact,  his 
apprehension  immediately  on  his  arrival  had  put  it  out  of 
his  power  to  disclose  anything.     *'  I  have  heard  he  hath 
been  at  Mr.  Wiseman's  at  Braddocks."     ''Of  the  Earl  of 
Arundel  I  do  not  remember   anything   of   moment."     "J 
was   told   that   there   was   one   Barnes,    &c.,"   and  so  on. 
Pressed  for  more  precise  answers  on  the  more  important 
intelligence   he   could  give,    he   told   of  Verstegan   as  the 
channel  of  communication  between  the  refugees  and  their 
friends  in  England;  ^7  of  Dr.  Giffard  wishing  him  to  see 
his  mother  and  ask  for  relief;  of  some  of  Parsons'  writ- 
ings, and  of  the  chests  of  books  still  ''  lying  at  St.  Omers, 
which   were  printed  when  the  Armada  was  to  have  come 
over,"  six  years  before  ;but  of  anyone  in  Norfolk  who  had 
befriended  him ;  of  Edward  Yelverton  or  the  score  of  others 
in  Norfolk  whom  he  must  have  had  it  in   his  power  to 


286  ONE   GENERATION  OF 


betray,  not  one  single  luord.  For  himself,  his  agony  and 
despair  wrung  from  him  this  last  affecting  appeal :  "I 
desire  leave,  if  you  please,  to  wait  upon  the  most  Honour- 
able Her  Majesty's  Council,  and  that  this  act  be  con- 
cealed till  it  shall  please  them  to  dispose  of  me  howsoever 
to  their  honours  shall  seem  most  to  the  good  of  the  realm 
and  service  of  her  Majesty,  whom  I  do  beseech  upon  my 
knees  to  take  pity  upon  a  miserable  prisoner  and  offender ; 
yet  now  resolve  to  employ  all  my  forces  to  her  Majesty's 
service,  and  to  conform  myself  ever  as  it  shall  please  her 
Majesty  to  appoint  me."  Mercy  !  As  though  such  men  as 
Topcliffe  and  Young  and  Drew  understood  what  the  word 
meant,  or  had  one  little  spot  in  their  natures  where  com- 
passion could  find  a  momentary  resting-place. 

Next  day  Henry  Walpole  was  examined  again,  by  the 
same  examiners  as  before.  The  information  given  this 
time  consists  of  a  very  valuable  and  particular  account 
of  the  seminaries  in  Spain,  and  the  names  of  all  the 
scholars  and  priests  residing  in  them  at  the  time.  There 
are  between  forty  and  fifty  names.  After  this  he  appears 
to  have  received  instructions  to  write  to  the  Council  what- 
ever other  information  he  had  to  furnish.  Some  time 
appears  to  have  elapsed  before  this  letter  to  the  Council 
was  extracted  from  him,  and  it  was  probably  not  till  the 
beginning  of  July  that  it  was  handed  in.  Alas  !  it  is  a 
painful  document ;  painful,  i.e.,  to  those  who  would  wish  to 
find  a  man  who  had  endured  so  much  exhibit  more  heroism 
than  in  this  case  can  be  claimed  for  him.  But  who  of  us 
can  estimate  the  power  which  immeasurable  bodily  pain 
must  exercise  upon  a  highly  sensitive  and  nervous  tempera- 
ment? Who  shall  say  what  could  not  be  wrung  from 
himself,  if  all  the  mechanical  appliances  of  ingenious 
cruelty  were  paraded  before  his  eyes  in  ghastly  array — his 
imagination  worked  upon  at  one  time,  his  enfeebled  frame 
exposed  to  intense  torment  at  another,  and  the  recollection 
of  the  torture  of  yesterday  craftily  made  use  of  to  fore- 
shadow the  horrors  that  were  prepared  for  the  morrow  ? 
Who   can   imagine   the   sum  of  misery,   shame,   remorse, 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  287 

despair,  and  self-reproach  which  those  gricQ  solitudes  could 
tell  of  in  the  cases  of  men  who  could  bear  their  agonies 
no  longer,  who  broke  down  and  betrayed  their  dearest 
friends,  and  when  the  respite  came  from  the  torturer's 
manacles  or  his  rack  were  left  to  reflect  upon  the  conse- 
quences which  their  weakness  might  have  brought  on 
others;  left  to  gnash  their  teeth,  and  gnaw  their  hearts, 
and  weep  tears  of  blood,  for  treachery  which  none  more 
than  they  themselves  blushed  at,  and  sorrowed  for,  and 
abhorred  ? 

It  would,  however,  be  an  injustice  to  Henry  Walpole  to 
allow  my  readers  to  suppose  that,  even  at  the  very  worst, 
he  betrayed  any  who  were  not  already  heavily  compromised. 
A  careful  reading  of  this  elaborate  confession  shows  plainly 
enough  that  he  compromises  no  one  at  home  whose  life 
or  liberty  could  have  been  put  in  peril  by  his  revelations. 
If  he  told  of  the  hundred  pounds  sent  over  to  Edward 
Walpole  through  Father  Southwell,  he  knew  that  South- 
well was  at  that  moment  a  prisoner  in  the  Tower.  If  he 
mentioned  the  four  Eookwoods  of  Coldham  Hall,  who  were 
at  Douay,  he  was  only  speaking  of  what  was  a  matter  of 
common  parlance.  If  he  says  that  he  had  heard  of  Gerard 
having  been  harboured  by  "one  of  the  Woodhouses  in 
Norfolk,"  he  leaves  it  quite  uncertain  whether  it  was 
Francis  Woodhouse  of  Breccles,  who  had  been  a  notorious 
Eecusant  for  years,  or  Philip  Wodehouse  of  Kimberley, 
who  was  in  a  position  to  take  care  of  himself.  The 
priests  whose  names  he  mentions  had  been  all  denounced 
long  before.  The  Wisemans'  house  at  Braddocks  had  been 
lately  searched,  and  its  inmates  thrown  into  prison.  For 
the  information  that  Holtby  "  lieth  about  York,"  it  was  as 
well  known  as  that  Lord  Huntingdon  was  to  be  found  in 
the  same  neighbourhood ;  but  he  does  not  reveal  the  name 
by  which  Holtby  was  hwion  among  the  Catholics.  "  I  think 
all  be  known,"  he  says,  "which  I  knew  to  be  Catholics 
fourteen  years  ago ; "  and  if  he  adds  the  names  of  "  Mr. 
Hubbard  and  one  Mr.  Walgrave,  in  Suffolk  or  Essex," 
this  was  but  to  tell  what  needed  no  telling,  for  there  were 


288  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

at  least  three  or  four  Hubbards,  and  as  many  Waldegraves, 
who  at  this  moment  were  among  the  suspect.  About 
friends  and  kinsfolk  in  Norfolk,  and  all  those  among  whom 
he  had  a  year  ago  learnt  that  John  Gerard  had  been  doing 
"much  good,"  he  tells  absolutely  nothing.^^ 

But  the  most  remarkable  part  of  this  paper  addressed 
to  the  Lords  of  the  Council  is  that  in  which  he  professes 
to  have  been  brought  to  see  the  errors  of  his  ways  and 
states  his  readiness  to  recant  and  conform.  The  language 
he  uses  is  not  creditable  to  him,  and  there  are  expressions 
for  which  I  can  offer  or  find  no  excuse.  When  he  says, 
**  I  never  allowed  of  the  ambition  of  the  popes  or  any  their 
unjust  usurpation  over  princes  and  their  kingdoms,"  it  is 
difficult  to  see  how  he  can  have  been  sincere.  When  he 
further  declares  his  readiness  "to  go  to  the  church  .  .  . 
and  there  preach  only  such  doctrine  as  my  conscience 
doth  tell  me,  and  the  Spirit  of  God,  to  be  manifestly 
deduced  out  of  the  Word  of  God;  "  when  again  he  says, 
"  having  conferred  with  divers  learned  Protestants  of  the 
clergy  at  York  I  did  find  much  less  difference  than  I 
thought,"  it  is  hard  to  get  rid  of  the  suspicion  that  his 
misery  and  terror  has  told  upon  him,  and  dragged  him 
down  to  overact  the  craven's  part.  It  is  true  he  does 
introduce  in  the  midst  of  all  this  a  saving  clause  which 
reads  like  an  attempt  to  shelter  himself  behind  a  quibble, 
though  here  again  he  can  hardly  have  believed  that  any 
recantation  would  be  accepted  as  sufficient  in  which  he 
declared  that  whatever  he  was  prepared  to  say  or  do, 
should  be  '^  xoithoxit  prejudice  of  the  Catholic  faith,  lohich 
I  ever  profess."  After  all,  we  must  read  this  document 
"  between  the  lines,"  and  even  so  there  is  much  that  must 
to  the  end  remain  unexplained. 

One  thing,  however,  is  certain,  viz.,  that  all  these  con- 
fessions and  revelations  did  not  save  Henry  Walpole  from 
far  worse  torture  than  he  had  been  subject  to  before  he 
made  them.  On  the  contrary,  the  really  dreadful  ordeal 
was  still  to  come.  In  July  1594  he  was  able  to  write.  It 
seems  that  in  the  next  few  months  Topcliffe  was  allowed 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  289 

to  deal  with  him  as  he  pleased.  What  he  endured  in  that 
terrible  time,  what  he  revealed,  and  what  he  was  pressed 
to  invent,  and  what  they  tried  to  make  him  say  or  do  or 
promise,  will  never  be  known.  The  curtain  drops  upon  all 
those  horrible  scenes  which  make  us  shudder  as  we  faintly 
endeavour  to  recall  them  to  our  minds.  We  do  know  that 
there  came  a  time  when  he  lost  the  use  of  his  hands 
altogether ;  and  when  he  somewhat  recovered  from  the 
effects  of  his  torturing,  his  writing  had  become  a  tremulous 
and  almost  illegible  scrawl.'9  For  nine  long  months  he 
lay  in  the  Tower,  and  no  further  word  or  whisper  concern- 
ing him  has  survived  to  our  time.  The  grey  old  walls 
have  many  a  sad  story  to  tell  of  those  who  languished 
there  broken  down  and  desperate,  but  no  sadder  one  than 
that  of  this  man,  who  aspired  to  be  a  hero  and  who  failed. 


19 


NOTES   TO   CHAPTEE   XI. 

1.  Page  272.  Devereux's  Lives  of  the  Devereux,  Earls  of  Essex , 
vol.  i.  p.  144.  Sir  Robert  Cecil's  birth  year  is  usually  given  as  1563, 
but  there  is  some  uncertainty  about  it.  In  a  letter  to  James  I.  (Camden 
Society)  Sir  Robert  speaks  of  "the  mutual  affection  in  our  tender 
years  "  which  had  existed  between  him  and  Essex. 

2.  Page  273.  Devereux,  i.  172  et  seq.  For  his  challenging  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  see  Edwards's  Life  of  Raleigh,  vol.  i.  p.  120.  Norreys  and  Drake 
sailed  from  Plymouth  on  the  14th  April ;  Essex,  in  the  Sioiftsure,  joined 
them  on  the  13th  May,  1589.  Devereux,  i.  194,  201,  204,  214.  Compare 
Naunton's  Fragmenta  Regalia ;  Lingard's  Elizabeth,  chap.  viii.  ; 
Wright's  Elizabeth  and  Her  Times,  vol.  ii.  p.  400. 

3.  Page  274.  Here  is  one  example  among  a  hundred.  "...  We 
have  examined  a  priest  whose  name  is  Gregory  Gunnes,  alias  Stone, 
being  found  out  here  by  one  Evan  Arden,  servant  unto  Mr.  Treasurer  of 
the  Household,  who  finding  him  by  his  speeches  to  be  but  a  lewd  fellow, 
trained  him  to  walk  into  a  lane  and  causing  two  honest  men  to  be  behind 
a  pale  where  they  might  hear  their  conference,"  &g.  &c. — P.  R.  0., 
Domestic,  Elizabeth,  vol.  179,  No.  7,  8th  June,  1585.  This  Gunnes  was  a 
Norfolk  man,  and  I  find  him  indicted  in  the  Guildhall  at  Norwich 
in  1596. 

4.  Page  275.  As  to  his  Judaism,  see  Spedding's  Bacon  (Life  and 
Letters),  i.  278.  The  paper  in  Murdin  says  nothing  about  it;  Camden 
asserts  it,  as  of  course  does  Cecil.  He  had  been  taken  prisoner  in  Don 
Pedro's  business  in  1558.  He  can  hardly  have  been  long  sworn  in 
physician  to  the  Queen,  otherwise  it  would  be  difficult  to  believe  that 
Anthony  Bacon  could  write  of  him  as  he  does  in  Birch,  i.  93  ;  yet 
Francis  Bacon  says  he  had  been  physician  "  several  years."  See,  how- 
ever, the  Abstract  of  the  Evidence  laid  before  the  Jury  on  the  trial 
of  Lopez. — Cal.  P.  R.  0.,  Domestic,  Elizabeth,  1591-4,  p.  445  et  seq. 

5.  Page  276.  See  the  graphic  account  of  Essex's  violence  given  by 
Standish  in  Birch,  vol.  i.  p.  149. 

6.  Page  276.    Camden's  Elizabeth,  B.  iv.  f.  59. 

i 

7.  Page  276.  He  adds  "  that  he  had  ruined  his  father  and  mother 
and  himself  by  ivhat  he  had  done  with  regard  to  Lopez,  and  the  service 
which  he  had  performed  to  the  Queen,^^ — Birch,  ii.  268. 

8.  Page  277.  Morus,  Historia  Prov.  Angl.  Soc.  Jesu,  lib.  v.  §  39, 
p.  212. 

290 


ONE   GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE    291 

9.  Tage  277.  The  "  hi^t  of  Pmonera  in  the  Tower,  under  the  custody 
of  Sir  Mich.  Blount,  Lieutenant,"  may  be  seen  in  the  Cal.  Domestic, 
Elizabeth,  1591-4,  p.  484.  For  Philip  Howard,  Earl  of  Arundel,  see  the 
very  curious  Life  of  him  published  from  the  original  MS.  by  the  Duke 
OF  Norfolk  in  1857.  Why  any  omissions  should  have  been  made  in 
printing  this  very  interesting  biography  it  is  difficult  to  understand. 
Hallam,  Const.  History,  vol.  i.  c.  v.  p.  255,  gives  a  good  account  of 
Wentworth's  tioo  offensive  speeches.  His  first  committal  had  taken 
place  in  February  1576  ;  "  he  was  by  the  Queen's  special  favour  restored 
again  to  his  liberty  and  place  in  the  House  on  Monday,  the  12th  day 
of  March  ensuing."  D'Ewes  has  given  a  full  report  of  his  examina- 
tion, etc. — Joiwnal  of  the  Houses  of  Parliament,  temp.  Eliz.,-p.  241  et  seq. 
On  the  second  occasion  of  his  outspokenness,  seventeen  years  after,  *'  so 
highly  was  her  Majesty  offended  that  they  must  needs  commit  them 
[Wentworth  and  Sir  Henry  Bromley]  ....  Whereupon  Mr.  Peter 
Wentworth  was  sent  Prisoner  to  the  Tower.  .  .  ."  This  was  "  Sunday, 
and  the  25th  February,"  1592-3.— D'Ewes,  u.s.,  p.  470. 

10.  Page  278.  The  authority  for  Southwell's  Life  and  Sufferings  is 
Mr.  Foley's  Record  of  the  English  Province,  S.J.,  series  i.  pp.  301-86. 

11.  Page  278.  The  following  extracts  from  "  Questions  to  be  proposed 
to  the  Council,  touching  the  sums  to  be  paid  to  the  Lord  Lieutenant 
by  prisoners  in  the  Tower,  for  diet,  fees,  and  other  charges,"  are 
suggestive  :  "  .  .  .  Now  the  L.  has  not  the  goods  or  bedding  of  prisoners 
...  is  he  to  have  them?  .  .  .  Shall  it  be  taken  at  entrance  or  departure 
of  prisoners?  .  .  .  The  Porter  may  claim  upper  garment  .  .  .shall 
it  be  only  upper  garment  ?  .  .  ,  Item,  whereas  the  Lieut,  is  bound 
to  send  meat  to  every  close  prisoner,  he  hath  invented  a  new 
exaction  to  cause  the  said  prisoners  to  pay  him  5s.  a  week /or  the  man 
that  bringeth  them  meat,  which  was  never  seen  before,  for  a  man  cannot 
pay  for  meat  unless  he  have  it,  a7id  a  close  prisoner  cannot  go  for  it  nor 
send  his  man  for  it.'' — P.  E.  0.,  Domestic,  Elizabeth,  vol.  xvii.  No.  46. 
These  questions  are  dated  "June  (?)  1561."  It  is  very  certain  that  matters 
did  not  get  better  after  this  time. 

12.  Page  279.     P.  R.  0.,  Domestic,  Elizabeth,  vol.  xvii..  No.  68. 

13.  Page  279.  u.s.,  No.  78.  As  Mr.  Jardine's  tract  is  now  rare  and 
seldom  met  with,  I  think  it  well  to  extract  from  it  the  following  order 
of  the  Privy  Council,  which  will  speak  for  itself. 

"  25th  Oct.  1591. 

"A  Letter  to  Doctor  Fletcher,  Richard  Topclyffe,  Richard 
Branthwayte,  and  Richard  Yonge,  Esquers. 

"  Whereas  one  Eustace  Wayte,  a  Semynarye  Prist,  was  of  late  taken, 
and  there  was  also  one  Brian  Lassey,  a  dispenser  and  distribiture  of 
letters  to  papysts  and  other  evyll  affected  subjects,  apprehended  in  like 


292  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

sorte  ;  Theise  shall  be  therefore  to  will  and  require  you  to  take  the 
examynacions  and  confessions  of  both  the  said  persons,  and  verie 
straightly  to  examyn  them  uppon  soche  articles  as  you,  Eichakd  Top- 
CLYFFE,  shall  administer  unto  them ;  and  if  they  shall  not  declare  their 
knowledges,  and  answer  directly  to  all  soche  matters  as  you  shall  think 
meet  and  necessary  to  he  propounded  unto  them,  then  shall  you  by  vertue 
hereof,  for  the  better  boulting  forthe  of  the  truthe,  cause  them  to  he  put 
to  the  manacles  and  soche  other  tortures  as  are  used  in  Bridewell,  to 
th'end  they  may  be  compelled  to  utter  soche  things  as  shall  concern 
Her  Majestic  and  the  Estate  :  And  their  Examynations  so  taken  by  you, 
we  pray  you  to  send  the  same  to  us." — From  the  Council  Book  in 
A  Reading  on  the  Use  of  Torture  in  the  Criminal  Laio  of  England,  hy 
David  Jardine,  1837,  Appendix  No.  34,  p.  92. 

Brian  Lasey  (spelt  Lassey  in  the  Council  Book)  was  brother  to 
EiCHARD  Lasey  of  Brockdish,  go.  Norfolk.  He  had  been  hetrayed  hy 
his  hr other  eight  years  before  this  horrible  torturing,  but  had  apparently 
managed  to  escape  apprehension.  In  Richard  Lacey's  confession, 
extorted  probably  under  great  pressure,  he  gives  some  valuable  informa- 
tion regarding  the  Catholic  gentry  in  Norfolk  and  Suffolk  at  this  time. 
I  hope  to  print  this  curious  document,  with  illustrative  notes,  in  the 
Original  Papers  of  the  Norfolk  and  Nonvich  Archceological  Society  at 
no  distant  date.  The  original  is  to  be  found  in  vol.  169,  No.  19, 
Domestic,  Elizaheth,  P.  R.  0.     It  is  dated  13th  March,  1584. 

14.  Page  279.    u.s.,  vol.  247,  No.  78,  No.  91. 

15.  Page  28S.  tt.s.,  vol.  249,  No.  4.  I  have  not  thought  it  necessary  to 
give  the  references  to  each  of  these  examinations.  The  Calendar, Domestic, 
Elizabeth,  1591-4,  may  easily  be  referred  to,  but  I  quote,  and  have 
before  me,  verbatim  transcripts  from  the  original  documents  themselves. 

16.  Page  283.  Sir  Edward  Coke  had  just  been  appointed  Attorney- 
General.  For  the  rivalry  between  Coke  and  Bacon  at  this  time,  see 
Spedding. 

17.  Page  285.  It  was  perfectly  well  known  to  the  Government  that 
Verstegan  was  the  principal  channel  of  communication  between  the 
refugees  and  their  friends  at  home.  As  to  Braddocks  and  the  Wisemans, 
Walpole  very  probably  had  heard  all  about  them,  the  search  at  their 
house  (Braddocks  in  Essex)  and  the  break  up  of  their  establishment, 
from  his  fellow-prisoner  Southwell.     See  Foley's  Records,  u.s. 

18.  Page  288.  On  Sir  Philip  Wodehouse,  see  previous  chapter. 
The  following  is  from  the  Day  Book  of  the  "  Commissioners  for 
Ecclesiastical  Causes  within  the  Diocese  of  Norwich,"  now  in  the 
Bishop's  Registry:  "23rd  March  1597  .  .  .  I?i  aula  infra  Pallacium 
Episcopale  Norvicense  .  .  .  before  William,  Bishop  of  Norwich.  .  . 
Edm.  Sucklinge,  S.T.P.,  Robert  West,  S.T.P.,  JohnMaplisdon,  Archd." 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  293 

of  Suffolk.  .  .  .  Nicholas  Wilkinson,  Gent.,  appeared  in  custody.  .  .  . 
And  being  further  examined  what  Conventicles  in  Matters  of  Keligion 
he  had  frequented,  he  saith  that  he  did  not  frequent  any  such  unlawful 
assemblies,  neither  that  he  had  been  at  any  Popish  Recusant's  house, 
saving  only  at  Breccles  at  the  house  of  Mr.  Francis  Woodhouse,  Esq. 
(whose  wife  is  a  Recusant),  since  his  coming  from  London,  and  hath 
made  his  abode  there  in  that  house  by  the  space  of  three  weeks  last  past 
before  this  his  Examination.  And  being  secondly  required  whether  he 
would  receive  the  Holy  Communion  or  not,  he  answered  he  was  not  fully 
persuaded  in  his  Conscience  touching  the  doctrine  of  that  Sacrament, 
&c.,  cfec." 

19.  Prtr/e  289.  "...  I  can  well  believe  that  he  (Henry  Walpole)  was 
racked  that  number  of  times,  for  he  lost  through  it  the  proper  use  of  his 
fingers.  This  1  can  vouch  for  from  the  following  circumstance.  He 
was  carried  back  to  York,  to  be  executed  in  the  place  where  he  was  taken 
on  his  first  landing  in  England,  and  while  in  prison  there  he  had  a 
discussion  with  some  ministers,  which  he  wrote  out  with  his  own  hand. 
A  part  of  this  writing  was  given  to  me,  together  with  some  meditations 
on  the  Passion  of  Christ,  which  he  had  written  in  prison.  .  .  .  These 
writings,  however,  I  could  scarcely  read  at  all,  not  because  they  were 
written  hastily,  but  because  the  hand  of  the  writer  could  not  form  the 
letters.  It  seemed  more  like  the  first  attempts  of  a  child  than  the  hand- 
writing of  a  scholar  and  a  gentleman  such  as  he  ?yas." — Gerard's  Autobio- 
graphy prefixed  to  The  Condition  of  Catholics  under  James  I.,  p.  xci. 


Note   A. 
HENRY   WALPOLE'S   CELL   IN  THE   TOWEE. 

The  following  account  is  extracted  from  a  paper  in  the  Month  for 
December  1874,  by  Mr.  Morris,  entitled  "  The  Tower  of  London." 

' '  Father  Gerard's  account  of  his  escape  from  the  Tower  is  not  likely  to 
be  forgotten  by  any  one  who  has  read  it.  It  makes  an  impression  on  the 
imagination  second  only  to  his  narrative  of  the  torture  he  endured.  It 
will  be  interesting  therefore  to  try  to  identify  the  cell  occupied  by  him, 
and  the  place  where  he  effected  his  escape  by  crossing  the  moat  on  a 
rope.  He  has  mentioned  a  sufficient  number  of  circumstances  to  make 
this  identification  possible,  and  as  far  at  least  as  the  cells  are  concerned 
which  were  honoured  by  the  imprisonment  of  Father  Henry  Walpole 
and  himself,  they  are  happily  in  excellent  condition,  and  but  little 
changed. 

"Sir  Richard  Barkly,  the  Lieutenant,  conducted  him,  when  he  was 
brought  to  the  Tower  of  London  from  the  Clink  prison,  '  to  a  large  high 


294     ONE   GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE 

tower  of  three  storeys,  with  a  separate  lock-up  place  in  each,  one  of  a 
number  of  different  towers  contained  within  the  whole  inclosure.  He 
left  me  for  the  night  in  the  lowest  part.'  The  warder,  after  throwing 
some  straw  on  the  ground,  '  fastened  the  door  of  my  prison,  and  secured 
the  upper  door  both  with  a  great  bolt  and  iron  bars.  The  next  day  I 
examined  the  place,  for  there  was  some  light  though  dim,  and  I  found 
the  name  of  Father  Henry  Walpole,  of  blessed  memory,  cut  with  a  knife 
on  the  wall,  and  not  far  from  there  I  found  his  oratory,  which  was  a 
space  where  there  had  been  a  narrow  window,  now  blocked  up  with 
stones.  There  he  had  written  on  either  side  with  chalk  the  names  of  the 
different  choirs  of  angels,  and  on  the  top,  above  the  cherubim  and 
seraphim,  the  name  of  the  Mother  of  God,  and  over  that  the  name  of 
Jesus,  and  over  that  again,  in  Latin,  Greek,  and  Hebrew,  the  name  of 
God.' 

"  The  place  thus  described  was  the  Salt  Tower,  an  ancient  tower,  the 
origin  of  the  name  of  which  is  unknown,  and  which  seems  at  one  time 
to  have  shared  with  the  White  Tower  the  honour  of  being  called  after 
'  Julyus  Sesar.'  The  tower  has  received  a  new  external  face  of  stone, 
but  the  interior  is  as  nearly  in  its  ancient  state  as  is  compatible  with  its 
present  use  as  a  dwelling-house.  A  door  has  been  opened  from  the 
bottom  of  the  tower,  which  did  not  exist  in  Father  Gerard's  time,  when 
the  entrance  to  it  was  from  the  ballium  wall  or  inner  line  of  fortification, 
of  which  the  Salt  Tower  formed  the  south-east  angle.  Father  Gerard 
took  no  account  of  what  is  now  called  the  cellar,  and  the  interior  face  of 
the  stones  of  its  walls  shows  no  sign  of  ever  having  been  scored  by  a 
prisoner's  knife.  Besides  this  there  are  three  ancient  storeys.  What  we 
should  now  call  the  first  floor  is  the  cell  to  which  Father  Gerard 
descended  from  the  door  by  which  he  entered,  and  in  which  he  found 
Father  Walpole's  '  oratory.'  The  room  is  '  sufficient  large  and  commo- 
dious for  a  prisoner,'  being  a  pentagon  about  sixteen  feet  across.  It  is 
no  longer  dimly  lighted,  for  a  modern  two-light  Gothic  window  has  taken 
the  place  of  one  of  the  ancient  loopholes,  through  which  the  cell  received 
of  old  such  light  and  air  as  it  had.  There  were  five  of  these  little 
openings  in  the  enormously  thick  walls  of  the  circular  tower,  and  as 
Father  Gerard  says  that  at  least  one  of  these  was  blocked  up  with  stones, 
the  place  may  well  have  been  dim. 

"  There  are  many  inscriptions  remaining  on  the  walls  of  the  cell, 
interesting  enough  in  their  way ;  but  there  was  one  in  particular,  that 
has  not  been  noticed  in  any  of  the  books  written  on  the  Tower,  the  sight 
of  which  made  one's  heart  leap  into  one's  mouth.  There  were  the 
words,  thickly  coated  with  whitewash,  that  testified  that  in  this  cell 
Henry  Walpole  had  been  imprisoned.  The  name  of  the  martyr  is  to  be 
seen  where  Father  Gerard  saw  it,  by  the  window,  though  of  course  the 
holy  words  that  he  had  written  close  by  in  chalk  have  long  ago  been 
effaced.  A  very  fine  old  fireplace  faces  you  as  you  enter  the  cell, .and  the 
window  once  thus  sanctified  is  the  next  to  it  on  your  left." 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE  TRIAL  AND  THE  SCAFFOLD. 

There  is  a  curious  story  to  be  found  in  Henry  Walpole's 
earliest  biography  (published,  it  must  be  remembered, 
within  a  year  of  his  death)  which  professes  to  account  for 
the  sudden  decision  of  the  Council  to  bring  their  prisoner  to 
trial.  We  are  told  that  in  January  1595  a  Jesuit  Father, 
whose  name  does  not  appear,  had  been  commissioned  to 
take  charge  of  six  young  Englishmen,  who  had  been 
spending  some  time  at  the  seminary  of  St.  Omer,  and  to 
transfer  them  to  the  new  seminary  at  Valladolid.  The 
vessel  in  which  they  set  sail  was  captured  by  an  English 
cruiser  in  the  Channel,  and  the  whole  party  was  thrown 
into  prison.  The  boys  were  the  sons  of  men  of  birth  and 
position  in  England,  who  had  sent  their  children  across  the 
sea  to  be  educated — contrary  to  the  statute  which  had 
made  such  a  course  illegal — and  of  course  they  belonged  to 
the  class  of  malcontents  who  were  either  Popish  Recusants 
or  at  least  averse  to  the  dominant  creed.  The  capture  of 
so  many  young  people  at  once  created,  says  Cresswell, 
some  excitement.  They  were  first  brought  before  the 
Council,  and  then  sent  to  Archbishop  Whitgift,  to  be  kept 
under  surveillance  and  to  be  taught  the  error  of  their  ways. 
They  are  said  to  have  behaved  with  something  like  con- 
tumacy, but  they  were  compelled  to  afford  information  on 
the  condition  of  the  French  and  Spanish  seminaries  ;  and 
the  intelligence  gathered  from  them  sufficed  to  increase  the 
irritation  and  annoyance  of  the  Government,  who  learnt 
that  the  activity  of  the  English  Jesuits  on  the  Continent 
was  just  as  great  as  ever,  and  their  success  as  remarkable 
as  ever  in  inducing  young  Englishmen  to  leave  their  homes 

295 


296  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

and  to  seek  education  in  the  colleges  beyond  the  sea. 
These  lads  had  not  been  long  under  the  Archbishop's  charge 
before  their  conductor  disappeared,  and  then  for  the  first 
time,  to  the  mortification  of  the  authorities,  it  leaked  out 
that  this  NayUs  7nerchant,  as  he  was  supposed  to  be,  was 
himself  a  Jesuit  Father,  and  that  he  had  managed  to  escape 
the  clutches  of  the  law.  This  was  provoking  enough,  but 
when,  very  shortly  after,  all  the  six  youths  gave  their 
jailers  the  slip,  and  succeeded  in  getting  safely  to  the  other 
side  of  the  Channel,  it  was  only  natural  that  the  Govern- 
ment should  rush  to  the  conclusion  that  such  a  remarkable 
escape,  on  such  a  large  scale  too,  must  have  been  the  result 
of  some  widespread  plot,  of  which  many  must  be  cognisant, 
and  the  ramifications  of  which  might  extend  very  much 
further  than  yet  appeared.  We  are  told  that  Topcliffe  was 
called  in  to  advise  what  should  be  done,  and  that  he 
reminded  the  Lords  of  the  Council  that  there  were  two 
notable  Jesuits  still  pining  in  the  Tower — Southwell,  who 
had  been  lying  there  nearly  three  years,  and  Walpole,  who 
had  been  in  confinement  fifteen  months.  Topcliffe  sug- 
gested that  these  two  should  be  brought  to  trial  without 
delay,  and  proceeded  with  according  to  the  utmost  rigour  of 
the  law.^ 

The  truth  of  this  story  is  that  on  the  25th  January,  1595, 
one  of  the  Fathers  of  the  Society,  named  William  Baldwin, 
started  from  St.  Omer  for  Spain,  as  Cresswell  tells  us, 
having  six  scholars  under  his  charge.  The  vessel  in  which 
they  sailed  was  captured  by  an  English  ship  and  brought 
home  as  a  prize  ;  Father  Baldwin,  who  was  committed  to 
the  custody  of  Lord  Nottingham,  the  Lord  High  Admiral, 
being  taken  for  a  Neapolitan  merchant,  was  subsequently 
sent  to  Bridewell  and  there  detained  as  a  prisoner  of  war. 
The  boys  were  put  under  the  custody  of  Aylmer,  Bishop  of 
London,  and  first  one  and  then  another  were  let  out  on 
bail,  their  friends,  it  is  to  be  presumed,  giving  security  for 
their  reappearance  when  called  on.  One  and  all  slipped 
away  and  again  crossed  the  Channel.  Father  Baldwin, 
after    being    kept    some    months     in    confinement,    was 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  297 

exchanged  against  one  Hawkins,  an  Englishman,  who  had 
been  a  prisoner  in  Spain.  Not  till  they  had  all  got  away 
safely  was  it  discovered  that  an  active  Jesuit  emissary  had 
succeeded  in  outwitting  the  Government ;  and  it  is  quite 
conceivable  that  under  the  irritation  that  was  aroused  the 
Lords  of  the  Council  resolved  upon  making  an  example  of 
such  Jesuit  Fathers  as  were  then  in  prison,  and  that  thus 
the  trial  of  Southwell  and  Walpole  was  precipitated. 

It  is,  however,  hardly  worth  while  to  attempt  to  account 
for  Henry  Walpole's  trial  taking  place  when  it  did,  nor 
would  it  be  worth  our  while  to  do  so  at  all,  but  that  an 
impression  had  got  abroad,  and  a  report  been  circulated, 
that  the  Queen  had  been  so  shocked  at  the  execution  of 
.  Campion  that  she  had  vowed  never  again  to  put  a  Jesuit 
Father  to  death.  Certain  it  is  that,  though  several  Jesuits 
had  been  captured,  none  had  been  executed  for  more  than 
thirteen  years  :  the  unhappy  Seminary  priests  had  been 
butchered  by  scores,  but  of  the  Jesuits  who  had  been 
hunted  down  none  had  suffered  on  the  scaffold  since  the 
day  when  Campion  and  Briant  had  been  hung  at  Tyburn. 
Whatever  may  have  been  the  occasion  or  the  motive,  the 
fact  alone  is  what  we  are  now  concerned  with.  In  the 
spring  of  1595  it  was  determined  that  Henry  Walpole  should 
be  sent  to  York  for  trial. 

The  judges  who  held  the  Lent  Assizes  at  York  were 
Francis  Beaumont  and  Matthew  Ewens.  Beaumont  had 
been  appointed  a  Justice  of  the  Common  Pleas  about  two 
years.  He  was  the  father  of  the  dramatic  poet,  and  he  had 
himself  been  a  fellow  commoner  of  Peterhouse  a  few  years 
before  Henry  Walpole  had  matriculated  at  the  college. 
Ewens  had  been  raised  to  the  bench  of  the  Exchequer  only 
a  few  months,  and  this  was  probably  his  first  criminal  cause. 
Associated  with  these  was  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  and  William  Hillyard,  who  had  been 
reader  at  the  Temple  some  years  before,  had  represented 
York  in  the  Parliament  of  1586,  and  was  now  Recorder  of 
the  city.2 

Unhappily  the  Assize  Rolls  of  this  period  can  no  longer 


298  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

be  found,  and  the  only  details  of  the  trial  that  have  reached 
us  have  come  down  to  us  in  a  fragmentary  form.  But  we 
learn  that  the  prosecution  was  entrusted  to  Serjeant  Saville, 
ancestor  of  the  present  Earl  of  Mexborough,3  and  the  jury 
was  impanelled  on  Thursday,  the  13th  of  April,  1595.  The 
indictment  appears  to  have  contained  three  counts: — 

1st.    That  the  prisoner  had  abjured  the  realm  without 
a  licence. 

2nd.     That  he  had  received  Holy  Orders  beyond  the 
seas. 

3rd.  That  he  had  returned  to  England  to  exercise  his 
priestly  functions,  he  being  a  Jesuit  Father  and 
a  priest  of  the  Eoman  Church. 
The  prisoner  pleaded  "  Not  guilty,"  and  Serjeant  Saville 
proceeded  to  open  the  case  for  the  prosecution.  The  speech 
which  he  delivered  seemed  to  have  been  a  long  and 
elaborate  one.  He  did  not  spare  the  Jesuits,  we  may  be 
sure :  he  did  not  spare  the  prisoner.  It  was  bad  enough 
that  he  was  a  priest ;  it  was  worse  that  he  had  entered  the 
Society ;  but  that  he  should  have  returned  to  his  country 
to  pervert  and  corrupt  men's  minds  was  worst  of  all;  and 
this  of  itself,  according  to  the  provisions  of  the  statute, 
constituted  him  guilty  of  the  crime  of  high  treason,  and 
deserving  of  a  traitor's  death.  When  the  prosecutor  had 
finished,  Henry  Walpole's  own  confessions,  extracted  under 
torture,  or  such  of  them  as  were  pertinent  to  the  occasion, 
were  read  by  the  clerk  of  the  court ;  and  upon  the  evidence 
thus  adduced  the  jury  were  called  upon  to  pronounce  their 
verdict.  At  this  point  Henry  Walpole  begged  to  be  heard 
in  his  own  defence.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  no  one 
charged  with  a  capital  offence  in  any  English  court  was 
allowed,  under  any  circumstances,  to  employ  counsel  to 
defend  him  for  more  than  two  centuries  after  the  time 
we  are  now  speaking  of,  and  the  chances  of  obtaining  an 
acquittal  were  almost  infinitely  small ;  on  this  occasion  it 
was  even  moved  by  the  Becorder  Hillyard  that  the  prisoner 
should  not  be  heard.  The  court,  he  said,  had  before  it  the 
confessions  which  had  been  put  in  as  evidence,  and  required 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  299 

to  hear  no  more.  The  prisoner  earnestly  and  humbly 
appealed  against  the  cruel  objection,  and  Beaumont  over- 
ruled it  and  allowed  him  to  proceed.  Then  he  is  reported 
to  have  commenced  his  reply.^ 

"I  find,  my  Lords,  I  am  accused  of  Two  or  Three 
Things. 

"  1st.  That  I  am  a  Priest,  ordained  by  the  Authority  of 
the  See  of  Borne. 

'^2ndly.  That  I  am  a  Jesuit^  or  one  of  the  Society  of 
Jesus. 

"  Srdlij.  That  I  returned  to  my  Country  to  exercise  the 
ordinary  Acts  of  these  Two  Callings ;  which  are  no  other 
than  to  gain  Souls  to  God. 

"  I  will  shew  that  none  of  these  Three  Things  can  be 
Treason :  Not  the  being  a  Priest,  which  is  a  Dignity  and 
Office  instituted  by  our  Lord  Jes7cs  Christ,  and  given  by 
Him  to  His  Apostles,  who  were  Priests ;  as  were  also  the 
holy  Fathers  and  Doctors  of  the  Church,  who  converted  and 
instructed  the  World :  And  the  first  Teachers,  who  brought 
over  the  English  Nation  to  the  Light  of  the  Gospel,  were 
also  Priests ;  so  that  were  it  not  for  Priests,  we  should 
all  be  Heathens ;  consequently  to  be  a  Priest  can  be  no 
Treason. 

"  Judge  Beamont  here  spoke  ;  Indeed,  said  he,  the  merely 
being  a  Priest,  or  Jesuit,  is  no  treason;  hut  what  makes 
you  a  Traitor,  is  your  returning  into  the  Kingdom  against 
the  Laws.  If  to  be  a  Priest,  said  Father  Wal'pole,  is  no 
Treason,  the  executing  the  Office,  or  doing  the  Functions  of 
a  Priest,  can  be  no  Treason.  But  if  a  Priest,  said  the  Judge, 
should  conspire  against  the  Person  of  his  Prince,  icould  not 
this  he  Treason  ?  Yes,  said  Father  Waljpole ;  but  then 
neither  his  being  a  Priest,  nor  the  following  the  Duties  of  his 
Calling,  would  make  him  a  Traitor ;  but  the  committing  of  a 
Crime  contrary  to  the  Duty  of  a  Priest ;  which  is  far  from 
being  my  Case. 

"  Yo^L  have  been,  said  Beamont,  with  the  King  of  Spain, 
and  you  have  treated  and  conversed  loith  Parsons  and 
Holt,  and  other  Bebels  and  Traitors  to  the  Kingdom;  and 


300  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

you  have  returned  hither  contrary  to  the  Laws;  and  therefore 
you  cannot  deny  your  bei?ig  a  Traitor.  Father  Walpole 
replied,  To  speak  or  treat  with  any  Person  whatsoever,  out 
of  the  Kingdom,  can  make  me  no  Traitor,  as  long  as  no 
proof  can  be  brought,  that  the  Subject  about  which  we 
treated  was  Treason  ;  neither  can  the  returning  to  my 
native  Country  be  look'd  upon  as  a  Treason,  since  the 
Cause  of  my  Eeturn  was  not  to  do  any  Evil,  either  to 
the  Queen  or  to  the  Kingdom. 

"  Our  Laws  appoint,  said  Beamont,  that  a  Priest  who 
returns  from  beyond  the  Seas,  and  does  not  present  himself 
before  a  Justice,  within  Three  Days,  to  make  the  usual 
Submission  to  the  Queen's  Majesty,  in  Matters  of  Beligion, 
shall  be  deem'd  a  Traitor.  Then  I  am  out  of  the  Case, 
said  Father  Walpole,  who  was  apprehended  before  I  had 
been  one  whole  Day  on  English  Ground. 

"  Here  Beamont  being  put  to  a  Nonplus,  Judge  Elvin 
ask'd  him,  If  he  was  ready  to  make  that  Submission  to  the 
Queen,  in  Matters  of  Beligion,  which  the  Laws  of  the  King- 
dom required,  viz.,  To  acknowledge  her  Supremacy,  and 
abjure  the  Pope  ?  Father  Walpole  answered,  he  did  not 
know  what  laws  they  have  made  in  England  whilst  he 
was  abroad,  nor  what  Submission  these  Laws  required  ; 
but  this  he  very  well  knew,  that  no  Law  could  oblige  any 
one,  that  is  not  agreeable  to  the  Law  of  God ;  and  that 
the  Submission  that  is  to  be  pay'd  to  earthly  Princes, 
must  always  be  subordinate  to  that  Submission  which 
we  owe  to  the  great  King  of  Heaven  and  Earth.  Then 
he  added.  You,  my  Lords,  sit  here  at  present  in  Judgment 
as  Men,  and  judge  as  such,  being  subject  to  Error  and 
Passion ;  but  knoio  for  certain,  that  there  is  a  sovereign 
Judge,  who  luill  judge  righteously ;  tvhom,  in  all  Thiiigs, 
we  miLst  obey  in  the  first  place ;  and  then  our  laioful  Princes, 
in  S2ich  Things  as  are  lawful,  and  no  farther. 

"  Here  the  Lord  President  spoke.  We  deal  very  favour- 
ably with  you,  Mr.  Walpole,  said  he,  lohen,  iwtioithstanding 
all  these  Treasons  and  Conspiracies  zuith  the  Persons  afore- 
said, loe  offer  you   the  Benefit  of  the  Laiv  if  you  will  mit 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  301 

make  the  Submission  order'd  by  the  Laio ;  tvhich,  if  you 
luill  not  accept  of,  it  is  proper  you  should  be  punish' d  accord- 
ing to  the  Law.  Father  Walpole  replied,  There  is  nothing, 
my  Lord,  in  which  I  would  not  most  willingly  submit 
mj^self,  provided  it  be  not  against  God :  But  may  His 
divine  Majesty  never  suffer  me  to  consent  to  the  least 
Thing,  by  which  He  may  be  dishonour'd,  nor  you  to  desire 
it  of  me.  As  to  the  Queen,  I  every  Day  pray  for  her 
to  our  Lord  God,  that  He  would  bless  her  with  His  Holy 
Spirit,  and  give  her  His  Grace  to  do  her  Duty  in  all  Things 
in  this  World,  to  the  End  that  she  may  enjoy  eternal  Glory 
in  the  World  to  come :  And  God  is  my  Witness,  that  to 
all  here  present,  and  particularly  to  my  Accusers,  and 
such  as  desire  my  Death,  I  wish  as  to  myself  the  Salvation 
of  their  Souls,  and  that,  to  this  End,  they  may  live  in  the 
true  Catholic  Faith,  the  only  Way  to  eternal  Happiness." 

It  was  not  for  nothing  that  Henry  Walpole  had  gone 
through  his  legal  training  at  Gray's  Inn,  if  he  could  acquit 
himself  so  well  on  this  supreme  occasion.  But  it  need 
hardly  be  said  that  it  was  all  in  vain.  He  had  been 
brought  into  court,  not  to  obtain  a  trial,  but  to  hear  his 
sentence,  and  this  was  soon  to  follow.  The  judge  summed 
up  the  evidence,  and  ordered  the  jury  to  find  the  prisoner 
guilty.  They  did  as  they  were  told,  and  the  prisoner  was 
removed  to  his  cell  to  await  the  sentence,  which  for  the 
present  was  deferred. 

There  was  another  priest,  a  Gloucestershire  man,  named 
Alexander  Rawlings,  whom  it  had  been  determined  to  make 
an  example  of  at  the  same  time,  who  had  now  to  be  tried. 
He  had  been  educated  at  the  English  College  at  Rheims, 
and  had  been  exercising  his  priestly  functions  in  Yorkshire 
for  some  years  before  the  pursuivants  caught  him.  He 
had  been  arrested  on  Christmas  Eve,  and  had  apparently 
been  in  York  Castle  ever  since.  He  had  never  been 
connected  with  the  Jesuits,  and  was  a  seminary  priest 
of  whom  very  little  is  known. s  It  was  too  late  on  the 
Thursday   to   proceed   with   this  man's  trial,  and  when  it 


302  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

came  on  it  occupied  the  whole  of  the  next  day.  While 
it  was  going  on,  and  while  Henry  Walpole  was  hourly 
expecting  to  hear  his  doom,  he  found  means  to  write  to  his 
father  and  some  other  friends.  In  his  letter  to  his  father, 
which  unhappily  has  not  been  preserved,  he  made  one 
last  request,  viz.,  that  £80  should  be  distributed  among  the 
officials  of  the  castle  in  which  he  had  been  immured.  It 
is  only  reasonable  to  assume  that  the  jailers  were  made 
acquainted  with  the  contents  of  the  letter,  and  took  good 
care  that  it  should  be  delivered,  together  with  any  others 
that  their  prisoner  might  choose  to  send.  One  of  these 
other  letters  has  reached  us  in  a  Latin  translation,  and 
may  be  seen  in  extenso  in  Henry  More's  History,  but  as 
the  volume  is  one  of  excessive  rarity  I  think  it  well  to 
give  a  portion  of  it  here.  It  was  addressed  to  Father 
Holtby,  of  whom  we  have  heard  before. 

"  I  am  to  be  executed  to-morrow.  It  appears  to  me, 
therefore,  needful  that  I  should  commend  myself  to  your 
prayers  and  those  of  our  fathers  and  brethren.  For  the 
rest,  I  doubt  not  that  the  Holy  Spirit  has  already  suggested 
to  you,  as  to  all  truly  Catholic  hearts,  with  whom  I  glory 
in  being  in  communion,  to  pray  to  our  God,  Creator, 
Eedeemer,  and  Sanctifier,  that  He  may  be  my  helper  in 
this  last  conflict  that  I  have  to  sustain,  for  the  glory  of 
His  name  and  the  edification  of  His  holy  Church.  That 
He  may  vouchsafe  to  strengthen  the  inner  man  against  all 
the  suggestions  of  this  fleshly  body  that  we  gat  from  the 
old  Adam !  This  earthly  prison-house  which  keeps  in 
the  soul  is  about  to  fall  off,  but  God  with  His  mighty 
hand  will  raise  it  up  again,  glorified  and  immortal,  to  place 
it  in  its  home  of  eternal  felicity,  and  to  make  it  conformable 
to  the  body  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ."  Then,  after  briefly 
referring  to  the  main  points  of  his  defence,  he  prays  for 
the  forgiveness  of  those  who  had  compassed  his  death,  &c., 
and  brings  his  letter  to  a  close  as  follows :  "  I  tell  you 
nothing  of  all  that  passed  during  my  year's  detention  in 
the  Tower  of  London.  I  hold  my  peace,  too,  on  many 
other  details.     You  will  know  them  in  heaven,  when   we 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  3^3 


shall  see  each  other  again.  Let  this  letter,  written  in  haste, 
but  with  cordial  affection,  suffice.  It  is  time  for  me  to 
lay  my  pen  aside  to  employ  myself  only  in  prayer  to  the 
great  God,  for  whom  I  am  fighting  the  good  fight,  with 
whom  I  hope  to  be  face  to  face  on  the  morrow." 

But  the  closing  scene  was  not  to  come  so  soon  :  the  trial 
of  Eawlings  was  protracted  till  late  on  Friday  evening,  and 
the  judges  resolved  not  to  call  up  the  prisoners  to  receive 
sentence  till  next  day.     This  was  Saturday  the  15th,  and  as 
the  ordinary  practice  was  to  allow  one  night  to  intervene 
between  the  sentence  and  its  execution,  and  even  in  those 
days  the  susceptibilities  of  some  people  would  have  been 
shocked   if   two   men   had   been   hung   upon    the    Sunday 
morning,  they  were  granted  another  day  to  live,  and  the 
hanging  was  fixed  for  the  Monday  morning,  the  17th  April, 
1595.     Not  even  during  those  two  days  which  preceded  the 
execution,  however,  was  Henry  Walpole  allowed  to  remain 
unmolested.     Once  again   he  was   subjected  to   an  ordeal 
which    to   our   mind   appears,    under    the    circumstances, 
eminently  shocking  and  indecent,  but  which  to  our  fore- 
fathers seemed  only  a  proper  and  commendable  proceeding. 
Once  again  the  prison  was  turned  into  a  debating  place, 
and  a  crowd  of  polemics  presented  themselves  to  dispute  on 
points  of  controversial  divinity  with  this  man  who  had  but 
a  few   hours  to  spend  on  earth.     It  is  painful  to  hear  of 
clergymen  of  learning   and   character  taking  part  in   such 
an  unseemly  wrangling,  and  of  a  scholar  and  gentleman  like 
Sir  Edwin  Sandys  putting  himself  forward  and  entering  the 
lists ;  ^  but  these  encounters  suited  the  temper  of  the  age, 
which,  after  all,  was  a  cruel  and  coarse  one  ;  and  people 
were   attracted   in   crowds   to  watch  the  way  in  which  a 
criminal  met  his  fate,   much  in  the  same  spirit  that  they 
assembled  to  look  on  at  a  bull-fight  or  a  bear-baiting. 

The  fatal  morning  came  at  last,  and  with  it  came  the  end. 
The  story  of  that  dreadful  day  has  reached  us  from  the  pen 
of  one  who,  if  he  were  not  present,  could  not  have  been  far 
away ;  for  the  letter  which  follows,  and  which  is  still  pre- 
served among  the  archives  at  Stonyhurst,  is,  I  believe,  in 


304  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

Holtby's  handwriting.     I  give  it  as  I  find  it,  neither  adding 
to  nor  withholding  a  word :  it  needs  no  comment. 

"  I  thought  it  my  dutie  bothe  to  him  of  whom  I  have  to 
write  &  to  yourself,  to  send  you  worde  of  that  v^^  I  have 
understood  of  F.  Warp.  \sic\  by  a  gentleman  whoe  was  his 
schoolefellowe  and  familiar  friend  in  Cambridge  and  lately 
felowe  prisoner  with  him  in  Yorke,  who  havinge  conference 
with  him  there  hath  tould  me  what  himself  was  there  an 
eye  witnesse  of.     First  for  his  usage  in  the  Tower  he  would 
not  tell  him  an  [y]  further  but  that  he  was  diverse  tymes 
(my  frende  thinks  6  or  7)  uppon  a  torture  I  thinke  by  his 
description   somewhat   like   that   of   F.    South"^  by  which 
means  bothe  his  thums  were  lamed,  so  that  he  had  not  the 
use  of  them ;  he  was  not  uppon  the  racke.     He  was  verie 
austere  unto  himselfe  after  his  cominge  out  of  the  Tower : 
in  all  his  jorney  he  neither  ley  in  bed  nor  came  upon  any, 
but  laye  uppon  the  flore.     In  the  castle  he  had  a  litle  matt 
of  a  yard  longe  uppon  which  he  used  in  the  night  to  kneele, 
and  untill  deade  sleepe  came  uppon  him  he  did  not  sleepe. 
And  he  that  ley  in  his  chamber  w*^  him  did  affirme  that  he 
never  wakened  but  he  heard  the  f  either  praye  or  sighe, 
and  some  tyms  when  the  comon  prisoners  in  the  gaile  did 
sweare  and  blaspheme,  he  should  heere  him  softly  to  saye 
Conjuro   te  Sathan,  audio  hlasphemiam.     Thus  saithe  my 
frend  he  laye  uppon  the  stones  (belike  his  chamber  beinge 
pavd  or  done  with  bricke)  unlesse  he  leined  uppon  his  elboe. 
But  beside  his  praiers  much  parte  of  the  night  he  spent  in 
making  verses  wherof  I  send  you  a  copie  so  far  as  he  went 
untill  his  deathe.     My  frend  whoe  tellethe  me  this  hath  his 
owne  copie  in  Yorkshire  which  is  so  ill  writt  (by  the  defect 
of  his   thums)  that  he  had  verie  much  adoe   to  reade  it 
thoughe  I  thinke  acquainted  with  his  hand. 

*'  The  daye  tyme  was  for  the  most  parte  spent  in  disputa- 
tion with  diverse  ministers  that  came  unto  him.  At  on, 
which  was  the  cheefe,  my  frend  was  present.  The  disputers 
were  on  Higgens,7  a  minister,  and  I  thinke  a  graduate  in 
their  kind  of  divinitie,  and  on  Sands,  sone  to  the  old  man 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  305 

of  Yorke,  deceased,  and  he  the  better  witt  and  a  fine 
philosopher,  and  able  to  saye  more  than  any  there,  it  is 
thought,  but  he  is  a  man  of  feine  livinge  and  noe  minister. 
The  questions  were  betweene  them  of  Justification,  and  of 
the  continuance  of  faith  in  Peeter's  chaire.  In  the  first 
Higgens  was  in  the  begininge  verie  earnest ;  but  as  his 
reasons  grewe  weaker  soe  his  words,  insomuch  that  after- 
wards he  deferred  much  unto  the  F%  and  kept  of  some  other 
ministers  when  they  would  interrupt  him  or  be  hastie  with 
him,  shewinge  both  with  words  and  with  countenance  that 
the  man  was  to  be  used  with  reverence.  The  particulars 
my  frend  doth  not  remember.  Sands  desired  rather  to 
prove  his  part  perpetua  or  at  lone  than  otherwise ;  trustinge 
to  his  witt  and  fine  discourse,  he  made  a  speeche  of  an 
bower  and  a  quarter  longe,  seekinge  to  prove  that  the  faithe 
first  might  decaye  by  scriptures,  then  that  it  had  decayed 
as  well  by  councills,  which  he  alledged,  as  by  other  authori- 
ties. When  he  had  done,  F.  Warp,  collected  all  his  speeche, 
recitinge  the  suihe  thereof,  and  all  his  arguments  so  playnly, 
so  truely,  and  with  so  good  a  methode,  that  both  the  dis- 
puters  and  others  gave  him  great  thanks,  and  seemed  to 
saye  they  had  not  heard  the  like.  Then  he  answered  the 
particulers  with  greate  facilitie,  and  as  my  frend  saithe  he 
shewed  a  greate  memories,  leinge  down  unto  them  the 
stories  of  those  councells,  and  declaring  how  they  were  never 
confirmed,  &c.  Sands  would  sometyms  interrupt  him,  but 
still  he  was  satisfied,  and  drewe  neerer  and  neerer  by 
grauntinge  many  particulers.  Insomuch  that  in  the  ende 
he  sayd  publicly  there  was  litle  difference  betweene  their 
opinions,  usinge  the  Greeke  wurd,  that  there  diff.  was  but 
in  Microtrion,  I  thinke  he  sayd.  On  minister  standinge  by 
my  frend  havinge  seene  the  F'.  stand  so  still  when  the 
other  was  speakinge  so  longe  together,  and  afterwards 
seeinge  him  speake  so  fully  to  the  matter  and  so  amply, 
he  sayd  softly  to  himself.  This  is  a  close  felowe,  sayd  he, 
affirminge  it  with  an  othe.  Finally  all  the  companie  did 
shewe  greate  satisfaction  both  in  his  modestie,  wisedom, 
and  learninge,  and  desired  him  then  with  greater  instancie 

20 


3o6  ONE  GENERATION   OF 

that  he  would  yeeld  but  in  the  least  point,  or  doe  somethinge 
to  save  his  life,  which  they  sayd  they  greately  pittied. 

"  At  the  tyme  of  his  execution,  first  they  brought  out 
Mr.  Alexander,  and  the  people  would  have  had  him  lye  on 
the  right  side,  but  he  refused,  seinge  that  was  provided  for 
a  better  man.  There  went  diverse  of  the  cheefe  to  F.  Warp, 
to  intreate  him  that  they  might  save  him,  and  stayed  him 
2  howers  all  (?),  the  other  lyinge  uppon  the  hurdle.  On 
tyme  they  asked  him  what  he  sayd  of  the  Queene  and 
whether  he  would  praie  for  her.  As  I  take  it  this  was  there 
question,  and  he  answered  he  tooke  her  for  his  Queene,  and 
honoured  her,  and  would  praie  for  her  ;  with  which  answer 
they,  being  desirous  to  save  him,  rane  to  the  President,  but 
it  pleased  God  that  he  propounded  an  other  question, 
willinge  them  to  aske  him  what  yf  the  Pope  should  ex- 
comunicate  her,  &c.,  and  forbid  men  to  praie  for  her  (I  doe 
not  well  remember  this  question,  but  I  will  inquier  better 
of  it),  whether  then  he  would  doe  as  before ;  he  answered 
he  might  not  nor  would  not.  Then  they  caried  him  awaye. 
Mr.  Alexander  was  first  put  to  deathe,  whoe  beinge  taken 
up  went  first  to  F.  Warp,  to  aske  |his  benediction.  They 
had  beene  leid  contrarie  ways  uppon  the  hurdle,  and  F. 
Warp,  head  next  unto  the  horses.  Mr.  Alex',  goinge  up  the 
ladder  kissed  it,  and  the  people  bad  him  kiss  the  rope  alsoe. 
He  say'd  he  would  with  all  his  hart,  and  so  did  when  he 
came  unto  it.  When  he  was  dead  they  shewed  him  to 
F.  Warp.,  still  using  persuasions.  When  he  was  up  the 
ladder  they  still  cried  uppon  him  to  yeeld  in  the  least  point, 
but  to  sey  he  would  confer,  and  he  should  be  saved.  He 
answered,  you  knowe  I  have  conferred.  They  kept  him 
longe  with  such  questions,  and  satisfied  all  in  fewe  words, 
and  prayed  muche.  At  lengthe  some  (?)  asked  him  what 
he  thought  of  the  Queen's  supremacie,  he  answeared  she 
doth  chalenge  it,  but  I  maye  not  graunt  it.  His  last  praier 
was  Pr  nf,  and  he  was  begininge  Ave  Maria  when  they 
turned  him  over  the  ladder.  They  let  him  hange  untill  he 
were  dead.  There  were  verie  many  of  the  best  thier  present, 
and  the  highe  Sherife  went  with  him  to  his  deathe,  which 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  3o7 

was  never  seene  in  the  contrey  before.  I  am  promised  a 
peece  of  his  ha  .  .  .  which  was  taken  out  of  the  fier  whole 
when  the  people  were  gone."  ^ 

Thus  suffered  upon  the  scaffold  Henry  Walpole,  in  his 
thirty-sixth  year.     If  he  did  not  deserve  a  better  fate,  he 
could  scarcely  have  met  with  a  worse.     His  creed  was  not 
my  creed ;  his  career  may  well  require  excuse ;  his  life  may 
seem  to  some  one   long   mistake  ;  his    character  was  not 
without  defects ;  there  was  even  in  his  intense  enthusiasm 
a  certain  element  of  effeminacy  ;  he  had  not  that  rugged 
vigour  and  coarseness  of  fibre  which  has  enabled  some  men 
to  bear  pain  and  be  silent  even  unto  death,  but  when  there 
remained  for  him  nothing  but  to  die,  he  died  bravely.    Thank 
God  the  fires  of  Smithfield  will  never  be  lighted  again,  nor 
the    hangman's    bloody  knife    again   be  plunged   into   the 
bowels  of   unhappy  priests  at  York  ;  but,  alas !  the   spirit 
of    intolerance     is     not     dead,     and     it    is    against    that 
spirit,    and    not    only    against     the     ghastly     exhibitions 
of  its  malignity,  that  we   have  to  protest  and  be  on  our 
guard.     Falsehood  has  had  its  martyrs  as  well   as  truth, 
and  persecution  has  not  been  idle  in  the  east  or  the  west : 
the  Saviour  told  us  He  came  not  to  send  peace  but  a  sword. 
Even  now,  with  all  our  boasted  advance,  we  find  it  hard  to 
extend  our  charity  towards  those  whose  powers  of  persua- 
sion we  have  learnt  to  fear.     Even  now  there  is  rather  a 
tendency  to  excuse  the  atrocities  of  a  bygone  age  than  to 
condemn  them.     But  let  who  will  plead  for  the  persecutor 
such  palliation  as  may  be  found :  for  me,  I  do  not  envy 
that  man  or  woman  who  can  think  of  Henry  Walpole's 
sufferings  without  pity,  or  of  his  cruel  death  without  shame. 


NOTES  TO    CHAPTER    XII 

1.  Page  296.  I  have  called  this  a  curious  story,  because,  though 
Cresswell  makes  a  great  deal  of  it  in  his  little  book,  neither  Yepez  nor 
Bartoli  mentions  it  at  all,  nor,  if  I  remember  rightly,  does  Father  Henry 
More.  Father  Baldwin's  apprehension  is  detailed  by  Juvencius  {Hist. 
Soc.  Jes.,lih.  xiii.  pars  v.  p.  143),  who  says  that  his  captors,  deceived 
by  Baldwin's  stature  and  military  bearing,  believed  him  to  be  an  Italian 
soldier  of  fortune.  He  for  his  part  pretended  to  know  no  English, 
and  kept  up  the  character  of  a  foreigner  till  he  was  released.  Cresswell 
assures  us  that  the  boys  were  examined  before  the  Lord  High  Admiral 
and  Archbishop  Whitgift,  and  that  they  were  interrogated,  among 
others,  by  M.  de  la  Fontaine,  preacher  of  the  French  Church  in 
London,  and  Adrian  Sara  via,  who,  he  says,  was  at  that  time  a  member 
of  Whitgift's  household.  [He  did  not  receive  his  stall  at  Canterbury 
till  nearly  a  year  after  this.]  In  both  cases  he  spells  the  names 
incorrectly,  and  evidently  did  not  know  who  the  men  were  whom  he 
writes  about.  He  adds  that  he  had  actually  received  his  account  from 
two  of  the  boys  who  had  escaped,  and  whom  he  had  talked  with  at 
Valladolid.  In  Mr.  Foley's  Records  of  the  English  Province,  vol.  iii. 
p.  503,  are  the  names  of  these  boys  and  an  account  of  Father  Baldwin. 
It  appears  that  at  the  time  of  his  capture  he  went  by  the  assumed 
name  of  Octavius  Fuscinelli.  Father  Baldwin  became  eventually  a 
very  conspicuous  character,  and  Mr.  Foley  gives  a  long  account  of 
him. — On  M.  De  La  Fontaine,  see  Strype,  Ann.  iv.  549  et  seq. ;  and 
on  Sara  VIA,  Ann.  I.  ii.  223,  and  Heylin,  History  of  the  Presbyterians, 
lib.  ix.  §  11. 

2.  Page  297.  Francis  Beaumont — he  was  never  knighted — was 
made  one  of  the  Justices  of  the  Common  Pleas  25th  January,  159|. 
Matthew  Ewens  was  made  a  Baron  of  the  Exchequer  1st  February, 
159|.  William  Hillyard  of  Winestead,  co.  York,  was  Reader  to  the 
Temple  in  1581,  and  M.P.  for  York  1586.  He  was  a  member  of  the 
Committee  for  considering  whether  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  should  be 
brought  to  trial  and  he  appears  then  to  have  been  Recorder  of  York. — 
Cooper's  Athence  Cant. ;  Foss's  Judges  ;  Dugdale's  Origines ;  The  Temple 
Records^  by  W.  H.  Cooke,  Q.C. ;  Sir  Simonds  D'Ewes'  Journals  of  Pari., 
Eliz.,  p.  294.    The  reader  will  notice  that  Challoner,  following  bis  MS., 

308 


ONE  GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE      309 

speaks  of  Ewens  as  Elvin.  There  was  no  such  judge  at  this  time, 
and  there  is  no  doubt  of  Judge  Ewens  being  concerned  in  Henry 
Walpole's  trial. 

3.  Page  298.  Sir  John  Saville  was  of  a  very  ancient  Yorkshire 
family.  He  was  made  Serjeant  29th  November,  1592,  and  Baron  of 
the  Exchequer  1st  July,  1598.  His  estates  in  Yorkshire  are  still  in  the 
possession  of  the  family.  His  brother  Henry  Saville  was  the  editor  of 
Chrysostom,  one  of  the  translators  of  the  Gospels  for  King  James's  Bible, 
and  the  founder  of  the  Savillian  Professorship  of  Mathematics  at  Oxford. 
— Foss's  Judges  ;  Wood's  Ath.  Oxon. ;  Cartwright's  Chapters  on  Yorkshire 
Hist.,  p.  202.  Sir  George  Saville,  one  of  the  members  for  Yorkshire, 
moved  the  repeal  of  the  Popish  disabilities  in  1778. 

4.  Page  299.  Challoner's  Missionary  Priests,  vol.  i.  p.  347.  Cresswell 
gives  a  r^sum^  of  Sir  John  Saville's  speech,  which  is  translated  by  Yepez. 
The  report  of  the  trial  in  the  text  is  from  Challoner,  who  appears  to 
have  had  before  him  the  original  document  from  which  Yepez  made 
his  Spanish  version.    Bartoli  makes  no  mention  of  the  trial. 

5.  Page  301.  He  made  his  appearance  at  Rheims  23rd  December, 
1587,  and  gave  his\ alias  as  Francis  Ferriman.  He  was  ordained  priest 
18th  March,  1590,  and  left  for  England  9th  April  of  the  same  year. — 
First  and  Second  Diaries  of  the  English  College,  Douay,  D.  Nutt,  1878. 

6.  Page  303.  Sir  Edwin  Sandys  was  second  son  of  the  Archbishop 
of  York.  Though  a  layman,  he  was  a  Prebendary  of  York  from  1582 
to  1G02,  as  his  brother,  Sir  Miles  Sandys,  was  from  1585  to  1601. 
He  was  a  pupil  of  Richard  Hooker  at  Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford  ; 
knighted  by  James  I.  in  1603  ;  treasurer  of  the  Virginian  Company  1619. 
He  was  thrown  into  the  Tower  with  Selden  in  June  1621,  but  released 
next  month.  In  1625  he,  together  with  Pym,  drew  up  a  petition  to 
Charles  I.  to  enforce  the  laws  against  Popish  Recusants.  His  work 
Europe  Speculum  was  at  one  time  a  book  much  read. — Wood's  Ath. 
Oxon.  ;  Le  Neve's  Fasti ;  Gardiner's  Prince  Charles  and  the  Spanish 
Marriage,  vol.  ii.  26,  29  ;  and  England  under  the  Duke  of  Buckingham 
and  Charles  I.,  vol.  i.  196.  There  is  much  about  him  in  Gardiner's 
History  of  England,  1603-1616,  and  in  Birch's  Court  and  Times  of 
James  I. 

7.  Page  304.  George  Higgin,  Prebendary  of  Eton  in  the  collegiate 
church  of  Southwell  from  1588  to  1624, — Le  Neve's  Fasti ;  Records  S.J., 
Collectanea,  part  ii.  p.  1014. 

8.  Page  307.  The  word  which  the  binder  of  this  letter  {Stonyhurst 
MSS.,  Father  Greene's  Anglia,  A,  No.  82)  has  "  cropt "  is  certainly 
hand.    The  hand  was  rescued  from  the  fire  and  sent  over  to  Edward 


3IO    ONE  GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE 

Walpole  at  Tournai.  He  appears  to  have  distributed  the  fingers  among 
friends,  retaining  the  thumb  himself  and  prizing  it  as  a  relic.  Father 
James  Zelander,  who  had  been  intimately  associated  with  Henry 
Walpole  in  the  Missio  Castrensis,  begged  hard  for  the  thumb  to  be 
deposited  among  other  relies  in  the  Church  of  the  Jesuits  at  Brussels  ; 
but  Edward  Walpole  could  by  no  means  be  prevailed  upon  to  part  with 
it,  until  great  pressure  was  put  upon  him  by  Father  Willlim  Holt,  who 
appears  on  his  deathbed  to  have  sent  to  Edward  Walpole  earnestly 
begging  him  to  surrender  the  precious  relic  to  the  Church.  This  must 
have  been  some  time  in  1599  or  1600.  Shortly  after  this  Father 
Baldwin  (see  note  1)  presented  to  the  same  church  the  halter  with  which 
Henry  Walpole  was  hung  ;  and  on  the  7th  February,  1604,  Zelander 
drew  up  a  formal  account  of  the  presentation  ;  which  document  is  now 
in  the  Royal  Library  at  Brussels  (MS.  3166,  pt.  ii.  c.  41,  §  9).  The  two 
relics  remained  in  the  treasury  of  the  Church  of  the  Jesuits  at  Brussels 
till  Uie  French  Revolution,  when  they  disappeared. 


I'l 


v 


CHAPTEK   XIII. 

THE    GATHERING    OF    THE    FRAGMENTS. 

"  Perhaps  only  those  who  have  endeavoured  to  throw  into  a  continuous 
narrative  the  vast  mass  of  details  involved  in  any  one  line  of  historical 
study,  are  conscious  how  easy  it  is  to  fall  into  error." — Todhunter, 
Whewell,  vol.  i.  p.  103. 

The  dreadful  news  of  Henry  Walpole's  shameful  death  was 
not  long  in  travelling  from  York  to  Norfolk.  Old  Christopher 
Walpole  and  his  wife  may  perhaps  have  hoped  against  hope 
even  to  the  last,  but  it  was  a  gloomy  outlook  for  them  now: 
of  their  six  sons  only  two  remained  to  them — for  the  three 
who  had  become  Jesuits  and  been  ordained  abroad  were 
as  dead  to  their  parents,  and  could  never  again  venture 
to  set  foot  in  England  except  at  the  risk  of  their  lives. 
Geoffrey  Walpole  was  now  the  eldest  of  the  family,  and 
was  still  at  his  father's  side  ;  so  was  Thomas,  who  had  been 
released  from  prison  after  having  told  all  he  knew  at  York 
and  subsequently  again  in  London.  For  Geoffrey,  I  cannot 
divest  myself  of  the  impression  that  he  laboured  under  some 
mental  or  physical  infirmity,  and  thus  was  saved  from  the 
notoriety  to  which  his  brothers  attained.  It  is  evident  that 
he  was  a  cypher  in  the  family.  He  was  not  sent  to 
Cambridge  as  the  others  were,  nor  indeed  does  he  appear 
ever  to  have  gone  far  from  his  paternal  home.  There  is 
nothing  to  show  that  he  had  any  religious  scruples  about 
conforming  or  taking  the  oath  of  allegiance.  He  married 
on  the  21st  February,  1608,  Dorothy  Beckham  of  Der- 
singham,  and  though  I  find  him  assessed  upon  his  lands 
at  Dersingham  in  1601,  and  apparently  cultivating  those 
lands   still   in   1610,   no   testamentary   disposition    of    his 

311 


312  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

property  or  any  administration  after  his  decease  has 
survived  to  our  time.^ 

When  Thomas  Walpole  returned  to  Norfolk  after  his 
imprisonment,  he  appears  to  have  quietly  settled  down  as 
a  country  gentleman,  and  taken  the  management  of  the 
Anmer  estate ;  he  was  wanted  at  home,  for  his  father  had 
been  grievously  hit  in  his  pride.  The  old  man's  heart  was 
broken  and  his  occupation  gone ;  just  a  year  after  the 
tragedy  of  York  he  made  his  will,  and  then  he  turned  his 
face  to  the  wall.  On  the  19th  July,  1596,  less  than  fifteen 
months  after  his  son  Henry  was  executed,  he  died  at 
Anmer.  The  Norfolk  property  was  divided  between 
Geoffrey  and  Thomas ;  Thomas  was  to  have  Anmer,  keep 
up  the  house,  and  afford  a  home  to  his  mother  during 
her  life ;  Geoffrey  was  to  take  the  outlying  lands  of  Dersing- 
ham,  lands  which  are  now  part  of  the  Norfolk  estate  of 
His  Majesty  the  King.^ 

At  this  point  it  will  be  advisable  to  trace  the  career  of 
the  other  three  brothers,  who  at  their  father's  death  were 
virtually  outlaws,  and  had  become  exiles  from  their  country 
for  conscience'  sake.  They  all  attained  to  some  eminence 
in  the  Jesuit  body;  that  "  staff  corps,"  as  it  has  been 
called,  of  the  Church  of  Eome,  every  member  of  which  is 
a  picked  man,  and  by  the  necessity  of  the  case  possessed 
of  exceptional  intellect,  culture,  or  fervour.  It  will  not 
escape  the  notice  of  those  who  believe  in  hereditary  genius 
that  in  this  "Generation  of  a  Norfolk  House "  there  was 
no  lack  of  that  remarkable  power  of  brain,  that  subtlety  and 
taste  for  intrigue,  that  somewhat  perverse  and  reckless 
tenacity  of  purpose,  and  that  vigour  and  force  of  character, 
which  have  been  distinctive  of  the  Walpole  family  in  past 
times,  and  may  very  likely  thrust  some  members  of  it  to 
the  front  again,  to  play  a  leading  part  in  our  annals. 

Of  Eichard  Walpole,  the  third  son  of  Christopher,  we 
heard  last  when  he  met  his  brother  Henry  at  the  opening 
of  the  College  of  Seville,  in  the  winter  of  1592.  He  had  at 
that  time  volunteered  for   the  English    mission,  and   was 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  313 


actually  under  orders  to  start  upon  the  voyage  when  an 
opportunity  should  offer.  He  had  never  been  connected 
with  any  of  Cardinal  Allen's  colleges,  and,  strictly,  did  not 
fall  under  the  designation  of  a  seminary  priest ;  but  he 
had  received  priest's  orders  at  Eome  on  the  3rd  December, 
1589,  and  so  in  the  eye  of  the  law  had  been  guilty  of 
high  treason.  Three  years  before  his  ordination  he  had 
thoughts  of  offering  himself  to  the  Jesuits,  but  he  either 
changed  his  mind  then,  or  if  he  did  offer  he  was  for  some 
reason  rejected.  When  Father  Parsons  arrived  in  Spain 
in  1592,  and  then,  apparently,  made  the  acquaintance  of  the 
young  priest  for  the  first  time,  he  saw  at  a  glance  that  here 
was  too  valuable  a  man  to  send  away  on  the  errand  which 
could  be  discharged  by  far  inferior  emissaries  :  for  Eichard 
Walpole  was  the  most  learned  and  perhaps  the  ablest  and 
most  accomplished  of  the  brothers ;  and  now  that  the 
old  generation  of  scholars  who  had  fled  from  England  at 
the  accession  of  Elizabeth  was  beginning  to  drop  off,  it  was 
of  supreme  importance  that  their  places  should  be  supplied, 
if  possible,  by  men  like  Richard  Walpole,  who  had  some 
experience  of  an  English  university  training,  and  were 
qualified  to  keep  up  the  spirit  and  tone  which  the  first 
ounders  of  Rheims  and  Douay  had  infused  into  those 
seminaries,  and  which  there  was  some  reason  to  fear  might 
die  with  them.  3 

Parsons  soon  acquired  a  commanding  influence  over 
Richard  Walpole's  mind ;  the  mission  to  England  was 
given  up,  and  once  more  his  thoughts  were  directed  to 
entering  the  Society  of  Jesus.  This  time  there  was  no 
difficulty,  whatever  there  may  have  been  before,  and  in 
February  1593  he  was  admitted  into  the  Society,  probably 
by  Parsons  himself,  at  Seville.^ 

For  the  next  four  years  he  was  employed  in  various 
offices  at  the  Spanish  colleges,  and  it  was  while  he  was 
Prefect  of  Studies  at  Valladolid  that  he  became  the  hero 
of  one  of  the  most  extravagant  stories  which  was  ever 
circulated,  even  in  an  age  so  credulous  and  uncritical 
as   the  sixteenth  century.     "A    strange    story,"  says  Mr, 


314  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

Spedding,  "  and  in  some  part  hard  to  believe,  but  .  .  . 
as  a  fact  in  the  history  of  criminal  proceedings,  it  is  still 
a  curiosity  worth  preserving."  s 

Edward  Squier  was  the  type  of  a  class  that  is  never 
likely  to  become  extinct  as  long  as  there  is  any  room  for  the 
chevalier  d'industrie.  With  just  enough  of  cleverness  to 
"pick  up  learning's  crumbs,"  and  so  receive  an  education 
which  had  given  him  a  distaste  for  the  habits  and  senti- 
ments of  his  kindred  and  associates,  and  aroused  in  him 
a  hankering  to  rise  in  the  social  scale,  he  had  received  no 
moral  benefit  from  his  schooling,  and  was  wholly  without 
conscience  or  principle.  He  had  been  living  for  some  years 
by  his  wits,  occasionally  employed  as  a  scrivener  or 
accountant,  disliking  the  occupation,  and  finding  it  hard 
to  make  two  ends  meet.  When  Sir  Francis  Drake  was 
making  preparations  for  his  last  disastrous  voyage,  Squier 
determined  to  join  the  expedition,  and  shipped  on  board 
a  vessel  called  the  Francis,  which  became  separated  from 
the  rest  of  the  fleet — for  Squier's  ill-luck  was  never 
relieved  by  a  single  gleam  of  success  in  his  strange  career 
— and  was  captured  with  all  hands  by  Don  Pedro  Tello, 
one  of  the  Spanish  admirals.  The  crew  were  carried  to 
Seville  and  treated  as  prisoners  of  war.  Squier  appears  to 
have  been  liberated  on  parole,  and,  always  on  the  look 
out  for  a  chance  of  turning  an  honest  or  dishonest  penny, 
he  bethought  him  that  he  might  improve  the  present 
opportunity.  He  soon  began  to  amaze  the  Spaniards  by 
going  about  and  challenging  them  to  dispute  on  matters 
of  religion,  and  put  himself  forward  as  a  champion  for  the 
Church  of  England  as  against  the  creed  of  the  Church 
of  Eome.  To  do  this  at  Seville  in  our  own  days  would  be, 
to  say  the  least,  somewhat  hazardous ;  to  do  it  in  the 
Spain  of  Philip  II.  was  to  court  imprisonment  at  least,  and 
to  run  some  danger  of  being  torn  to  pieces  by  a  fanatical 
mob.  But  Squier  had  no  intention  of  being  torn  to  pieces ; 
he  had  every  intention  of  being  thrown  into  prison,  and  thus 
get  for  himself  the  credit  of  having  suffered  for  truth's  sake 
when  his  ransom  or  order  of  release,  on  an  exchange  of 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  3^5 

prisoners,  should  arrive  from  home.  As  a  matter  of  course 
he  was  soon  arrested  by  the  Inquisition,  and  on  his  case 
being  inquired  into  he  was  sentenced  to  be  confined  two 
years  in  a  monastery  of  the  Carmehtes.  He  had  not  been 
long  at  the  monastery  before  he  changed  his  tone,  and  gave 
out  that  he  was  a  converted  character ;  there  were  still 
some  points  in  dispute  on  which  his  mind  was  unsettled 
and  distressed,  and  he  was  humbly  desirous  of  having 
his  last  doubts  resolved  by  some  man  of  learning,  some 
eminent  and  gifted  Jesuit  Father, — say  such  an  one  as 
Father  Walpole  of  the  English  College. 

By  this  time  Richard  Walpole  had  become  a  personage 
who  was  attracting  a  great  deal  of  notice  in  Spain  :  he  was 
regarded  as  a  man  of  profound  learning,  and  one  likely  to 
leave  his  mark  behind  him  ;  his  brother  Henry  had  recently 
been  hung,  and  was  claimed  as  the  first  martyr  of  the 
College  of  Seville.  Cresswell's  little  book  had  produced  a 
very  deep  impression,  and  had  especially  excited  the 
enthusiasm  of  a  Spanish  lady  of  rank,  who  was  connected 
with  the  noblest  families  of  the  country,  one  Dona  Luisa 
de  Carvajal,  who  had  a  large  fortune  entirely  at  her  own 
disposal.  She  had  long  been  animated  by  an  ardent  desire 
to  help  forward  the  English  mission,  and  when  Cresswell's 
biography  of  Henry  Walpole  was  published  she  became 
consumed  by  a  passionate  longing  to  cross  over  to  England, 
brave  the  penal  laws,  defy  the  Government  and  all  its 
cruel  enactments,  and  herself  take  part  in  the  glorious 
work  of  bringing  back  benighted  Englishmen  to  the 
Catholic  faith  once  more.^  Just  when  Squier  landed  at 
Seville,  Dofia  Luisa  had  put  herself  under  Richard  Walpole 
as  her  spiritual  adviser,  and  was  preparing  to  make  over 
to  him  her  whole  fortune  to  bestow  in  pious  uses,  having 
determined  to  divest  herself  of  all  that  bound  her  to  this 
world  and  to  live  henceforth  in  voluntary  poverty.  Squier 
must  have  heard  what  every  one  was  talking  about,  and 
he  thought  he  saw  a  chance  of  retrieving  his  broken 
fortunes.  Accordingly,  he  persuaded  his  Carmelite  custo- 
dians  to   carry   a   message   to   Richard   Walpole    begging 


3i6  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

him  to  come  and  hold  a  conference  at  the  monastery. 
Walpole  assures  us  in  his  narrative  that  he  did  not  obey 
the  summons  without  some  reluctance.  He  expected 
nothing  but  a  weary  dispute  on  controversial  divinity,  and 
to  enter  the  lists  on  such  subjects  with  a  broken-down 
scrivener,  who  might  be  a  crack-brained  fanatic  or  a 
designing  knave,  offered  very  little  attraction.  But  ac- 
customed to  obey  when  duty  called,  he  went  at  last,  and 
to  his  surprise  found  on  his  arrival  at  the  monastery  that 
Squier  had  altogether  changed  his  ground,  and  that  he 
was  now  begging  only  to  be  "reconciled  to  the  Church." 
Walpole's  suspicions  were  aroused — for  the  trick  of  getting 
thrown  into  prison  and  then  running  home  with  "  valuable 
information "  had  been  tried  before,  and  not  without 
success — and  those  suspicions  were  not  allayed  when  he 
found  Squier  betraying  an  ever-increasing  impatience  under 
his  captivity,  and  losing  no  opportunity  of  asking  that  he 
might  be  furnished  with  introductions  to  the  Catholic 
gentry  and  seminary  priests  in  England,  with  whom  he 
said  he  intended  to  put  himself  in  communication  when 
he  should  succeed  in  obtaining  his  liberty.  Eichard  Wal- 
pole was  too  wary  to  trust  the  fellow  with  such  dangerous 
information  as  he  asked  for,  and  it  is  evident  that  he 
gave  him  no  names  and  no  letters  :  if  he  had  done  so 
it  is  quite  certain  that  Squier's  confessions  would  have 
betrayed  them.  Suddenly,  after  being  among  the  Carmel- 
ites for  about  a  year,  Squier  managed  to  escape,  leaving 
behind  him  a  letter  to  Walpole  which  the  Inquisitors 
took  possession  of,  furnishing  Walpole  with  a  copy  only. 
Squier  made  the  best  of  his  way  to  England,  having  gained 
nothing  by  his  crafty  scheme.  Just  at  the  time  that  he  got 
back  (July,  1597),  the  expedition  on  what  is  known  as  the 
Island  Voyage  was  about  to  set  sail,  and  having  nothing 
better  to  do  he  joined  it,  and  got  a  berth  on  board  the  Earl 
of  Essex's  ship,  in  what  capacity  does  not  appear.  Once 
more  he  was  unfortunate  :  the  voyage  was  a  failure,  and 
brought  no  profit  or  prize-money  to  any  of  those  engaged 
in  it.     The  fleet  returned  in  the  middle  of   October,  and 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  317 

he  found  himself  again  at  his  wits'  end  for  employment. 
How  he  managed  to  exist  during  the  next  six  months  we 
are  not  told,  nor  would  it  interest  us  much  to  know  all 
the  ups  and  downs  of  such  a  life  of  scoundrelism  ;  but 
on  the  4th  May,  1598,  Chamberlain,  writing  to  Dudley 
Carleton,  says,  "  Here  be  certain  apprehended  for  a  con- 
spiracy against  the  Queen's  person  and  my  Lord  of  Essex 
.  .  .  much  buzzing  hath  been  about  it,  but  either  the 
matter  is  not  ripe  or  there  is  somewhat  else  in  it,  for 
it  is  kept  very  secret."  Mr.  Spedding  has  assumed  that 
this  passage  refers  to  Squier,  and  though,  at  a  time  when 
buzzings  of  this  kind  were  the  common  subject  of  talk 
at  every  tavern  and  ordinary,  it  would  be  rash  to  assert 
that  the  allusion  must  be  to  this  business,  yet  the  prob- 
ability is  that  it  does  refer  to  it. 7 

We  hear  no  more  of  Squier  during  the  next  four  or  five 
months,  but  on  the  23rd  September,  1598,  a  man  named 
John  Stanley  was  examined  before  Sir  John  Peyton, 
Lieutenant  of  the  Tower,  Francis  Bacon,  and  William 
Waad,  Clerk  of  the  Privy  Council,  and  gave  an  incoherent 
account  of  how  he  and  another  worthy,  named  Munday, 
had  contrived  to  get  released  from  imprisonment  at  Seville 
on  pretence  of  their  intending  the  taking  of  Flushing  from 
the  English  and  handing  it  over  to  the  king  of  Spain. 
Richard  Walpole,  they  said,  had  come  to  them  "  to  per- 
suade them  to  become  Catholics,  but  not  to  do  any  service 
agaiyist  the  Queen  or  the  realm."^ 

About  a  month  after  this,  viz.,  on  the  18th  October, 
Stanley  was  again  examined,  and  though  on  the  previous 
occasion  he  had  not  mentioned  Squier's  name,  and,  from  all 
that  appears,  had  never  heard  of  him,  now  first  we  read, 
**  Wal2:)ole  told  me  that  Rolls  and  Squier  were  employed 
about  Her  Majesty's  person,  and  had  received  money  for 
the  same."  The  man  had  evidently  been  tampered  with, 
but  clumsily  tampered  with,  since  his  last  examination, 
for  though  he  had  got  the  name  of  Squier  right  enough, 
he  bungled  about  the  poisoning,  and  instead  of  accusing 
Richard    Walpole   of   that,   he   says   that    it    was    Father 


3i8  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

Cresswell  who  told  him  "to  go  to  Munday  and  receive 
of  him  a  perfume  which  should  be  cast  in  the  way  of 
Her  Majesty,  to  cut  off  her  life."  Next  day  Squier  himself 
was  examined  for  the  first  time.  Squier  had  got  up  his 
amazing  story  with  some  little  skill,  though  in  the  end 
he  woefully  outwitted  himself.  In  his  examination  in  the 
Tower  before  Bacon,  Coke,  Sir  John  Peyton,  Fleming, 
and  Waad — 

"  He  confesseth  that  at  that  time  that  Walpole  persuaded 
this  examinant  to  attempt  and  be  employed  against  Her 
Majesty's  person,  this  examinant  did  take  upon  him  to 
have  some  skill  in  perfuming,  and  thereupon  Walpole  asked 
whether  he  could  compound  poisons,  and  this  examinant 
said  no,  but  said  he  had  skill  in  perfumes,  and  said  that  he 
had  read  in  Tartalia  of  a  ball,  the  smoke  whereof  would 
make  a  man  in  a  trance  and  soon  to  die,  to  whom  Walpole 
said  that  should  be  done  with  difficulty,  but  to  apply  poison 
to  a  certain  place  is  the  convenientest  way.  .  .   . 

"  Being  demanded  what  directions  he  had  from  Walpole 
concerning  his  employment:  saith  that  he  had  certain 
directions  from  Walpole  in  his  own  handwriting,  which 
as  he  saith  he  threw  into  the  water  the  same  day  he 
came  from  Seville.  And  the  letter  directed  to  Bagshaw 
he  threw  into  the  sea  after  he  came  past  Plymouth.  And 
saith  that  certain  poisonous  drugs  whereof  opium  was  one 
were  to  be  compounded  and  beaten  together  and  steeped 
in  white  mercury  water,  and  put  in  an  earthen  pot,  and  set 
it  a  month  in  the  sun,  by  Walpole's  said  directions. 

"  This  examinant  demanded  of  Walpole  how  he  should 
apply  the  poison,  and  he  said  it  should  be  put  in  a  double 
bladder,  and  the  bladders  to  be  pricked  full  of  holes  in 
the  upper  part,  and  carried  in  the  palm  of  his  hand  upon 
a  thick  glove  for  safeguard  of  his  hand;  and  then  to  turn 
the  holes  downward,  and  to  press  it  hard  upon  the  pommel 
of  her  Highness'  saddle ;  and  said  that  it  would  lie  and 
tarry  long  where  it  was  laid,  and  that  it  would  not  be 
checked  by  the  air.  .  .  . 

"  He  further  confesseth  that  he  bought   two   drams   of 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  319 


opium  and  five  drams  of  mercury  water,  at  an  apothecary's 
shop  in  Paternoster  Bow,  towards  the  further  end,  near 
Dr.  Smith's  house  :  one  of  the  residue  at  an  apothecary's 
in  Bucklersbury,  at  the  Plough,  and  the  other  two  at  an 
apothecary's  shop  in  Newgate  Market,  beyond  the  Three 
Tuns  on  the  left  hand.  All  which  he  bought  in  an  evening 
in  July  was  twelvemonth  ;  and  saith  that  he  carried  them 
about  six  or  seven  days ;  and  confesseth  that  he  com- 
pounded them,  and  put  them  in  an  earthen  pot,  and  set 
it  in  a  window  of  his  house  at  Greenwich,  where  it  might 
take  the  sun ;  and  saith  that  he  applied  part  of  it  to  a  whelp 
of  one  Edwardes  of  Greenwich,  and  never  saw  the  whelp 
after,  and  thinks  it  died  thereof." 

Five  days  later  Squier  had  more  particulars  and  fuller 
details  to  give,  and  by  this  time  Eichard  Walpole  is  not 
only  credited  with  a  plot  to  assassinate  the  Queen,  but 
he  is  further  said  to  have  suggested  an  attempt  upon  the 
life  of  the  Earl  of  Essex  ;  and  though  his  success  while 
experimentalising  upon  the  Earl  had  not  been  more  en- 
couraging than  in  the  case  of  "  Mr.  Edwardes'  whelp," 
yet  he  had,  he  says,  persisted  in  his  designs  notwith- 
standing. 

"  He  sayeth  that  the  other  three  drugs  or  ingredients, 
whereof  he  did  compound  these  poisons,  were  all  such  as 
might  be  beaten  to  powder;  one  of  which  was  yellowish, 
and  the  other  of  a  brownish  colour,  and  were  called  by 
the  Latin  or  Greek  names.  And  sayeth  that  all  three  cost 
eightpence,  as  he  remembereth.  And  sayeth  that  all  being 
compounded  together,  the  confection  was  of  a  duskish 
colour,  having  some  sort  of  yellow  in  it ;  and  the  whole 
composition  was  not  above  the  bigness  of  a  bean.  .  .  . 

"  He  confesseth  that  at  the  persuasion  of  Walpole,  the 
Jesuit,  he  undertook  to  poison  the  Earl  of  Essex,  when  he 
should  be  with  him  at  sea,  to  the  end  to  defeat  the  voyage, 
and  that  he  carried  the  confection  of  the  poison  with  him 
to  sea  in  the  Earl's  ship,  in  a  little  earthen  pot  of  a  red 
colour,  glazed  within,  with  a  narrow  mouth,  which  he 
stopped    with    cork   and   parchment,    made   it   close   with 


320  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

a  pack  thread,  and  carried  it  in  his  portmanteau,  and  did 
apply  it  to  the  pommel  of  the  Earl's  chair,  where  he  did  use 
to  sit  and  lay  his  hand,  which  chair  stood  under  the  spare 
deck,  where  the  Earl  used  to  dine  and  sup.  And  this  he 
did  in  an  evening  a  little  before  supper-time,  when  the  Earl 
was  at  sea  between  Fayal  and  St.  Michael,  and  saith  that 
the  confection  was  so  clammy  as  it  would  stick  to  the 
pommel  of  the  chair,  and  that  he  rubbed  it  on  with 
parchment.  And  soon  after  the  Earl  sat  in  the  chair  all 
supper-time,  and  that  the  arms  of  the  chair  were  of  wood. 

"  And  now  at  last  confesseth  that  the  Monday  seven-night, 
after  his  coming  home  from  Spain,  and  had  obtained  leave 
to  go  with  the  Earl  to  sea,  understanding  that  Her  Majesty's 
horses  were  in  preparing  for  Her  Majesty  to  ride  abroad, 
as  her  horse  stood  ready  saddled  in  the  stable-yard,  this 
examinant  came  to  the  horse,  and  in  the  hearing  of  divers 
thereabout  said,  '  God  save  the  Queen,'  and  therewith  laid 
his  hand  upon  the  pommel  of  the  saddle,  and  out  of  a 
bladder  which  he  had  made  full  of  holes  with  a  big  pin,  he 
impoisoned  the  pommel  of  the  saddle,  being  covered  with 
velvet,  by  brushing  the  poison  on  it  through  the  holes  of 
the  bladder,  with  his  hand,  and  soon  after  Her  Majesty 
rode  abroad  that  afternoon." 

It  was  the  invariable  characteristic  of  these  "plots  "  that 
somebody  should  be  put  to  death,  and  so,  as  Eichard 
Walpole  could  not  be  got  at,  Squier  himself  was  made  the 
victim.  Whatever  the  luckless  creature  meddled  with 
seemed  always  to  turn  to  his  harm,  and  as  his  life  could 
do  no  good  to  any  one,  they  hung  him.  At  the  gallows  he 
solemnly  repudiated  his  previous  confessions,  and  did  his 
best  to  atone  for  his  malignant  and  stupid  slander ;  but 
there  were  too  many  people  interested  in  keeping  up  a  belief 
in  the  story — people  who  would  have  been  stultified  if  it 
had  not  been  believed — to  allow  of  its  being  treated  as  a 
hoax,  and  a  great  deal  of  pains  was  taken  to  give  it  cred- 
ence and  importance.  Bacon  actually  wrote  a  pamphlet  in 
which  he  drew  up  an  account  of  the  case  with  all  the 
ingenuity  of  a  practised  advocate.     Coke,  ten  years  after. 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  321 


in  his  speech  at  Garnet's  trial,  made  use  of  the  story  to 
point  one  of  his  many  invectives  hurled  at  the  prisoner, 
against  whom  he  was  labouring  to  get  a  verdict ;  and  in  an 
"Order  for  Prayer  and  Thanksgiving  ...  for  the  safety 
and  preservation  of  Her  Majesty  and  this  realm,"  set  forth 
by  authority,  and  printed  in  1599,  the  "  Admonition  to  the 
Eeader  "  contains  an  account  of  the  plot  in  its  coarsest  form. 
Even  in  our  own  times  Mr.  Spedding  more  than  half  believed 
the  tale ;  and  in  popular  histories  the  attempt  to  poison 
Queen  EUzabeth's  saddle  is  still  repeated,  and  boys  and  girls 
are  taught  to  regard  it  as  true.  To  me  it  seems  only  a 
monstrous  fiction,  which  the  more  closely  it  is  looked  into 
the  more  entirely  incredible  does  it  appear.9 

Eichard  Walpole  remained  at  Seville  for  two  or  three 
years  after  the  "  Squier's  plot  "  had  been  exposed.  I  find 
him  next  at  Eome,  employed  as  secretary  to  Father  Parsons, 
and  his  name  is  attached  to  an  abstract  of  certain  letters 
lately  received  from  England,  dated  the  19th  June,  1602. 
In  1605  he  was  in  Spain  once  more,  and  causing  great 
annoyance  to  Sir  Charles  Cornwallis,  the  English  ambassa- 
dor, by  his  zeal  in  proselytising.  Sir  Charles  speaks  of  him 
as  "  a  countryman  of  mine  (i.e.,  of  the  same  county),  one 
Walpole,  a  hot-headed  fellow,  as  full  of  practice  as  he  is  of 
learning,  yet  therein  they  say  he  hath  attained  much  perfec- 
tion." About  a  month  after  this  he  made  some  stir  by 
converting  the  son  and  heir  of  Lord  Wotton  to  become  a 
CathoHc ;  and  in  December  of  the  same  year  Sir  Charles 
Cornwallis  writes  home  a  report  of  a  long  interview  he  had 
had  with  him  on  the  question  of  granting  toleration  to  the 
Catholics  at  home.  At  this  time  he  was  Vice-Prefect  of  the 
English  Mission  at  Valladolid,  and  while  acting  in  this 
capacity  a  disagreement  seems  to  have  arisen  between 
him  and  his  old  friend  Cresswell.  The  students  at  the 
college  complained  of  Eichard  Walpole  in  high  quarters, 
and  the  dispute  was  still  going  on  when  he  died  at 
Valladolid,  it  is  said  suddenly,  in  his  forty-third  year. 
The  exact  date  of  his  death  has  not  been  recorded,  but  it 
took  place  at  the  end  of  the  year  1607.'° 

21 


322  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


His  brother  Christopher,  of  whom  we  know  less  than  any 
of  the  others,  also  died  at  Valladolid  about  a  year  before 
him.  Though  the  last  to  leave  England,  he  entered  the 
Society  before  either  Eichard  or  Michael,  having  been 
admitted  at  Kome  on  27th  September,   1592." 

Thus  at  the  death  of  Eichard  Walpole  only  one  of  the 
Jesuit  brothers  survived  ;  this  was  Michael,  John  Gerard's 
convert.     Though  he  had  not  the  advantage  of  such  train- 
ing as  an  English  university  could  afford — and  his  father 
must  have  had  enough  experience  of  that,  after  three  of 
his  sons  had  tried  it  and  left  Cambridge  without  a  degree 
— yet   Michael   Walpole   was    not    the   least   conspicuous 
among  the  brothers.     When  Dona  Luisa  de  Carvajal  took 
up  her  abode  in  England,  Michael  was  her  confessor,  and 
appears  to  have  had  unbounded   influence   over  her.     He 
found  time,  too,  for  engaging  in  the  controversies  of  his 
time ;    exhibited    some    literary   activity,    and    occupied   a 
prominent  position  among  the  English  Jesuits  during  the 
whole   of  the  reign  of  James  I.     We  have  seen   that   he 
obtained  his  brother  Henry's  release  from  prison  at  Flush- 
ing, and  that  after  this  he  went  to  the  English  College  at 
Eome,  in   May   1590.      On   the  8th  September,   1593,  he 
entered  the  Society  of  Jesus  :  where  he  passed  his  noviciate 
we  are  not  told.     We  hear  no  more  of  him  for  ten  years, 
but  he  must  have  been  sent  into  England  either  at  the 
close   of   Queen    Elizabeth's    reign   or    shortly    after    the 
accession  of  James  I.,  for  when  John  Gerard  slipped  away 
to  the  Continent  after  the  excitement  raised  by  the  Gun- 
powder Plot  he   left  Michael   behind  him,  and  there   he 
seems  to  have  been  in  May  1606.     On  30th  August,  1607, 
Dona  Luisa  mentions  him  as  then  at  her  side,  and  in  1609 
he  published  at  London  his  translation  of  Boethius.     By 
this  time   he  seems  to  have  acquired   great   influence  in 
England,  and  when  James  I.  put  forth  his  apology  for  the 
new   oath    of   allegiance   Michael   Walpole    published    an 
Admonition  to  the  English  Catholics,  of  course  dissuading 
them    from   taking  the   oath.     The   book   was  printed   at 
St.    Omer,   and   does   not    seem   to   have   attracted  much 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  323 

attention,  but  the  author  drew  upon  himself  the  watchful 
eye   of   Archbishop   Abbot   by   his   close   connection   with 
Dona  Luisa,  and  probably  too  by   his   own   exertions   in 
proselytising :    some  time  in   the   spring   of   1610  he  was 
caught  by  the  pursuivants  and  thrown  into  prison.     The 
Spanish  ambassador,  Don  Pedro  de  Zuniga,  a  great  friend 
of  Doiia  Luisa,  succeeded  in  obtaining  his  release  with  some 
diflQculty,  and  then  only  on  condition  that  he  should  at 
once  leave  the  country,  which  he  did  accordingly.^^     He 
retired   to   Belgium,   and    employed    himself    at    first    in 
writing   an   answer   to   A    Treatise  concerning    Antichrist, 
which  had  been  published  some  years  before  by  Dr.  George 
Downham,  one  of  James  I.'s  chaplains  and  a  prebendary 
of  St.   Paurs.^3     Both   books   have   long   since   been   for- 
gotten.    In    September    1612    we    find    him    at    Douay, 
employed    in    arbitrating    in    some    dispute   between   the 
Jesuit  Fathers  and  the  authorities  of  the  English  College 
there.     In  the  autumn  of  1613  Don  Diego  de  Sarmiento, 
the  famous  Gondomar,  came  to  England  as  Spanish  am- 
bassador, and  Michael  Walpole  appears  to  have  returned 
to  England  in  his  train.     Gondomar  had  not  been  many 
weeks  in  London  when  Archbishop  Abbot,  whose  irritation 
at  Dona  Luisa' s  fanatical  behaviour  seems   to  have   gone 
on  constantly  increasing,  issued  a  warrant  for  her  appre- 
hension.  On  the  8th  October,  1613,  the  recorder  and  sheriff 
of  the  city  of  London,   with   a  large   band  of  constables, 
broke    into    Doiia    Luisa's   house    in    the   Barbican,    and 
arrested    every   one    they    found.     Michael   Walpole    had 
gone  there  early  in  the  morning,  to  hear  the  confessions  of 
the  devotees  who  kept  up  a  conventual  life  in  the  poorly 
furnished  and  scantily  supplied  dwelling,  and  he  fell  into 
the  hands  of   the   constables   for   the   second   time.     The 
assault    upon  the   Spanish  lady's    house   created  a    great 
excitement,  and  the  news  was  immediately  carried  to  the 
ears  of  M.  de  Boischot,  the  archduke's  ambassador,  who 
was   another   staunch   friend   of   the   Catholics,    and   who 
hurried  to  the  assistance  of  Doila  Luisa.     She  addressed 
herself  to  him  in  Spanish,  and  told  him  that  at  all  costs 


324  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

the  Jesuit  Father  must  be  set  free,  or  his  life  would  be 
in  danger ;  and  with  ready  tact  the  ambassador  turned 
round  to  Father  Walpole,  and,  treating  him  as  one  of  his 
servants,  rebuked  him  strongly  for  being  in  the  house 
contrary  to  his  express  orders,  and  bade  him  at  once  go 
home  and  never  come  there  again.  The  officials,  disarmed 
by  the  ambassador's  manner,  set  their  prisoner  at  liberty, 
and  he  made  the  best  of  his  way  to  a  place  of  safety. 
When  Dona  Luisa  died,  in  January  1614,  Michael  Walpole 
was  again  with  her,  and  he  accompanied  her  body  on  its 
removal  to  Spain  in  August  1615.  I  think  he  never 
returned  to  his  native  land.  Dr.  Oliver  says  he  held  the 
same  office  as  his  brother  Eichard  in  the  college  at  Valla- 
dolid,  but  I  have  not  found  any  authority  for  the  state- 
ment. About  a  year  after  his  leaving  England  he  published 
a  translation  of  Eibadaneyra's  Jjije  of  St.  Ignatius  Loyola^ 
which  is  said  to  have  gone  through  several  editions.  The 
last  I  find  of  him  is  a  letter  of  his  addressed  to  Gondomar, 
who  was  then  in  England,  in  which  he  intercedes  for  a 
certain  Jane  Mills,  who  had  been  one  of  Dona  Luisa' s 
companions  in  London,  and  asks  for  the  continuance  of  an 
old  pension  of  a  real  and  a  half  a  clay,  which  had  been 
formerly  awarded  to  her  by  the  king  of  Spain.  This  letter 
is  dated  from  Seville,  12th  August,  1624.  Michael  Walpole 
must  have  died  soon  after  this.^4  Hitherto  it  has  been 
maintained  that  his  death  occurred  in  1620,  but  this  is 
clearly  wrong;  and  if,  as  is  asserted,  the  eldest  of  the 
brothers,  Geoffrey,  was  buried  in  1622, 's  and  Michael  died 
shortly  after  the  date  of  his  letter  to  Gondomar,  only  one 
of  the  six  sons  of  Christopher  Walpole  of  Anmer,  Top- 
cliffe's  "  young  Thomas,"  survived  to  see  Charles  I.  on  the 
throne. 

Of  Thomas  Walpole  I  have  little  to  tell,  but  that  little 
is  not  without  interest  and  significance.  He  continued  to 
live  at  Anmer  for  many  years  :  he  married,  and  seems  to 
have  had  one  son  at  least :  his  wife's  name  was  Thomasine. 
She  too  was  a  strict  and  zealous  Catholic.  In  June 
1609    she  was  presented  to  the  Bishop  of  Norwich  as  a 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  325 

Popish  Eecusant,  being  described  as  wife  of  Thomas 
Walpole,  Gent.,  he  at  this  time  being  a  conformist.  I  find 
this  state  of  things  going  on  in  July  1610,  and  again  in 
August  1612.  In  1613  Thomas  Walpole's  name  appears 
in  the  Subsidy  Eolls,  in  which  he  is  assessed  on  his  goods 
at  Anmei\  and  on  them  alone,  from  which  we  may  almost 
assume  it  as  certain  that  he  had  made  over  his  land  to 
trustees. 

It  was  just  at  this  time  that  his  brother  Michael  was 
in  England  once  more,  and  under  the  protection  of 
Gondomar.  The  presentments  for  1614  are  missing,  but 
in  the  lists  of  Norfolk  Eecusants  for  1615  I  find  for  the 
first  time  Thomas  Walpole,  Gent.,  of  Anmer,  together  with 
his  loife  Thomasine  ;  and  after  this  for  thirty  years  1  can 
trace  him  no  more.  But  some  years  ago,  by  a  curious 
chance,  the  high  sheriff's  list  of  Eecusants  for  the  year 
1645  came  into  my  hands,  and  conspicuous  among  the 
names  upon  the  roll  I  find  the  tenants  of  Thomas  Walpole, 
Gent.,  returned  as  paying  a  composition  for  sums  due  for 
his  recusancy.  He  must  have  been  at  this  time  nearly 
eighty  years  old,  and  shortly  afterwards  the  Anmer  estate 
passed  to  the  Pells  :  from  them  it  went  to  the  Coldhams,  by 
one  of  whom  it  is  now  held.^^ 

We  catch  one  more  glimpse  of  this  Anmer  family.  On 
the  11th  October,  1617,  Christopher  Warner,  ^^ alias  vero 
nomine  Walpohts  Norfolciensis,"'  aged  nineteen,  entered  as 
an  alumnus  at  the  English  College  at  Eome,  and  after 
pursuing  his  studies  there  for  some  years  he  was  admitted 
to  priest's  orders  in  May  1622.  He  was  sent  in  1624  as  a 
missioner  to  England,  and,  apparently  while  there,  was 
admitted  to  the  Society  of  Jesus  in  1625.  We  are  told 
that  he  subsequently  served  as  a  Jesuit  priest  in  Devon- 
shire; that  after  this  again  he  was  sent  to  Belgium,  and 
became  Eector  of  the  Jesuit  College  at  Ghent ;  but  possibly 
at  the  Eestoration  he  returned  to  his  native  country  once 
more,  and  died  there  on  the  1st  of  December,  1664.  While 
in  England  he  passed  by  the  name  of  Warner  only, 
i.e.,   retaining    the   Christian    name    of    his   grandfather, 


'?26  ONE  GENERATION  OF 


:> 


he  assumed  for   his   surname   his   grandmother's    maiden 
name.^7 

I  have  chronicled  all  I  have  to  tell  of  this  "  one  genera- 
tion "  of  the  Anmer  family ;  I  have  a  few  words  to  add 
about  Edward  Walpole,  the  heir  of  Houghton.  We  have 
seen  that  Edward  Walpole  left  England  soon  after  his 
father's  death.  He  crossed  over  to  Belgium  with  Bernard 
Gardiner,  and  there  met  his  cousin  Henry  Walpole,  and, 
receiving  letters  of  introduction  from  him,  hastened  on 
to  Eome,  which  he  reached  on  the  20th  October,  1590.^^ 
Father  Henry  More  tells  us  that  he  had  a  licence  to  travel 
from  the  Lords  of  the  Council,  and  he  had  evidently  suffi- 
cient money  at  his  disposal  to  make  him  quite  free  from 
any  anxiety  on  the  score  of  his  means  of  livelihood. 
Watson  was  probably  right  in  saying  that  the  proceeds  of 
his  Tuddenham  estate  had  been  handed  over  to  John 
Gerard  for  pious  uses,  but  it  is  clear  that  he  had  disposed 
of  other  property ;  and  besides  what  he  must  have  taken 
with  him,  he  had  arranged  for  £100  to  be  sent  after |  him 
through  the  agency  of  Eobert  Southwell.^9  Nor  was  this 
all :  it  has  been  shown  that  when  John  Walpole  of 
Houghton  died,  in  April  1588,  he  left  his  interest  in  the 
Eobsart  property  to  his  second  son,  Calibut.  But  Edward 
Walpole,  the  heir,  however  little  he  might  wish  to  press 
his  claim,  could  not  be  despoiled  legally  of  his  right  to  a 
third  part  of  the  Newton  and  Syderston  manors;  in  the 
autumn  of  1588  he  sold  this  interest  to  his  brother  Calibut, 
and  he  appears  to  have  accepted  as  an  equivalent  an 
annuity  or  rent-charge  of  forty  marks  a  year,  which  in 
those  days  was  considered  a  liberal  annual  allowance  for 
a  gentleman  of  no  extravagant  tastes.=^° 

Thus  placed  beyond  the  reach  of  the  "  eternal  want  of 
pence,"  he  would  not  trespass  more  than  three  days  upon 
the  hospitality  of  the  English  College,  and  on  the  23rd  of 
October  he  entered  himself  as  a  convictor,  i.e.,  he  was 
pretty  much  on  the  same  footing  as  a  Gentleman  Com- 
moner at  Cambridge  or  Oxford  in  the  days  when  such 
students  were  subjected  to  very  little  restraint,  and  might 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  327 

pursue  their  studies  according  to  their  own  tastes.  At 
this  time  neither  Edward  Walpole  nor  Bernard  Gardiner 
seems  to  have  had  any  definite  plans.  Gardiner  appears 
to  have  thought  of  the  mihtary  profession.^^^  We  are 
assured  that  Walpole  shrank  with  some  repugnance  from 
the  thought  of  taking  orders,  but  his  cousin's  friends,  the 
Jesuits,  soon  acquired  influence  over  him,  and  he  began 
to  attend  their  lectures.  It  ended  as  we  should  have 
expected.  We  are  told  that  his  resolution  to  take  orders 
was  made  at  last  when  on  one  occasion,  in  company  with 
Father  Eichard  Smith,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Chalcedon,  he 
escaped  shipwreck  after  being  exposed  to  great  danger, 
and  on  the  5th  February,  1592,  he  took  the  decisive  step 
of  entering  himself  as  a  regular  alumnus  of  the  English 
College,  and  thereupon  pledged  himself  by  an  oath  to  take 
holy  orders,  and  to  exercise  his  functions  as  a  priest  in 
England  whenever  called  upon  to  do  so  by  the  authorities. 
That  same  Lent  he  received  minor  Orders,  and  on  Ascen- 
sion Day  1592  he  was  admitted  to  the  priesthood.^^  But 
these  things  were  not  done  in  a  corner :  he  was  too 
conspicuous  a  personage  to  escape  the  vigilance  of  the 
spies,  who  were  always  on  the  watch  for  men  worth 
plundering,  and  news  of  his  ordination  soon  reached 
England.  His  long  residence  at  Eome  must  have  been  a 
matter  of  notoriety,  and  his  leave  of  absence  was  drawing 
to  a  close.  If  he  did  not  return  when  that  licence  came 
to  an  end,  by  the  statute  his  estates  would  be  forfeited  ; 
and  in  those  days,  when  a  man's  estates  loere  forfeited 
to  the  Crown,  the  rule  was  that  some  favoured  courtier 
obtained  a  grant  of  them  and  made  his  market  out  of  the 
spoils.  It  was  a  vile  system ;  but  ever  since  the  suppres- 
sion of  the  monasteries,  and  the  enormous  confiscations 
which  had  then  ensued,  people  had  become  accustomed 
to  see  lands  change  their  ow^ners  frequently  and  suddenly, 
and  grants  of  forfeited  lands  and  manors  were  a  cheap  way 
of  rewarding  needy  placemen. 

Edward   Walpole   believed   that    his    ordination    was   a 
secret,  and  that  he  had  some  hope  of  being  able  to  save 


328  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

his  estates,  if  only  he  should  return  before  his  licence  had 
expired.  Some  time  in  the  spring  of  1593  he  seems  to 
have  gone  back  to  England,  and  to  have  sought  out  his 
brother  Calibut  in  London.  Calibut  had  about  a  year 
before  married  Elizabeth,  daughter  of  Edmund  Bacon  of 
Hesset  in  Suffolk,  and  had  now  too  much  at  stake  to  allow 
of  his  entangling  himself  in  his  brother's  concerns.  Never- 
theless, he  received  him  at  first  with  cordiality;  but  on 
becoming  aware  that  he  was  now  actually  a  seminary 
priest,  to  harbour  whom  was  treason,  he  entreated  his 
brother  not  to  compromise  him ;  and  Edward  Walpole,  when 
he  learnt  that  his  ordination  was  known  and  that  his  life 
was  in  real  danger,  and  probably  not  having  made  due 
preparation  for  any  such  contingency,  hastily  recrossed 
the  Channel,  and,  leaving  his  business  unfinished,  he  once 
more  sought  out  his  cousin  Henry,  who  was  at  this  time 
in  Belgium,  and  consulted  him  upon  the  course  he  should 
pursue.23  The  result  was  that  he  offered  himself  to  the 
Society  of  Jesus,  was  admitted  by  the  Provincial,  Oliver 
Manaraeus,  and  entered  the  Noviciate  at  Tournai  on  the 
4th  July,  1593,  just  a  year  after  Henry  Walpole  had  him- 
self completed  his  time  there.  Here  he  remained  for 
three  years,  passing  his  examinations  in  the  ordinary  way, 
though  he  has  left  it  on  record  that  there  were  some  of 
his  duties  which  he  found  it  difficult  to  discharge,  from 
his  imperfect  command  of  the  French  language.  He  con- 
tinued at  Tournai  till  the  8th  of  July,  1595,  when  he  was 
sent  to  the  college  at  Louvain.^^  But  he  was  a  marked 
man.  He  had  brought  himself  under  the  penalties  of  the 
penal  laws,  and  there  were  those  who  were  not  likely  to 
forget  him.  The  blow  came  at  last.  In  Trinity  term,  1595, 
he  was  indicted  in  the  Court  of  Queen's  Bench,  "/or  a 
supposed  treason  done  at  Borne  on  the  1st  April,  1593  ; " 
and  on  the  29th  May  he  was  outlawed  at  Norwich. ^s 
Hereupon  a  special  commission  was  issued  for  the  holding 
of  inquisitions  concerning  the  possessions  of  the  outlaw : 
they  were  held  at  Bury  St.  Edmunds  and  East  Dereham 
in  the  autumn  of  the  same  year;  and,  as  a  matter  of  course, 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE  329 


the  whole  of  the  settled  estates  which  he  had  inherited 
from  his  ancestors  at  Houghton,  Walpole,  Weybread,  and 
elsewhere,  as  well  as  those  which  his  cousin  William  had 
left  him  by  his  will,  were  at  once  forfeited  to  the  Crown.^^ 
The  family  would  have  been  wellnigh  beggared,  and  we 
should  never  have  heard  of  the  great  Sir  Robert  as  the 
son  of  a  wealthy  Norfolk  squire,  but  for  one  circumstance  : 
Edward  Walpole's  interest  in  these  lands  and  manors  was 
a  reversionary  interest,  and  there  were  two  tenants  for  life 
in  actual  possession — his  mother  at  Houghton,  and  his 
cousin  William's  widow  still  living  at  Tuddenham.  Either 
of  these  ladies  might  live  many  years,  and  in  the  meantime 
circumstances  might  arise  to  bring  about  the  reversal  of 
the  attainder ;  the  grant  of  the  lands  might  after  all  prove 
valueless,  and  whoever  obtained  that  grant  would  be 
prudent  if  he  turned  it  into  money  as  soon  as  he  could 
get  a  price. 

Two  years  passed  before  the  Queen  gave  away  the 
estates.  It  was  not  till  the  3rd  August,  1597,  that  they 
were  actually  bestowed  upon  two  persons  of  whom  we 
know  little  or  nothing — James  Hussey  and  John  Goodman, 
Esqrs. — the  grant  being  made  in  consideration  of  the 
services  of  Sir  Anthony  Ashley,  Clerk  of  the  Privy  Council.^/ 
It  is  to  be  presumed  that  Calibut  Walpole,  the  next  heir 
to  the  estates,  had  due  notice  given  to  him  of  what  was 
coming ;  for  on  the  27th  of  the  next  month  he  bought 
back  the  estates  of  the  grantees,  paying  what  was,  in  fact, 
a  fine  of  £1,600,  a  sum  which  in  those  days  would  be 
equivalent  to  a  charge  upon  any  estate  in  Norfolk  of  at 
least  £20,000.^2  As  far  as  Edward  Walpole  was  himself 
concerned,  the  attainder  and  the  outlawry  left  him  where 
it  found  him ;  he  had  already  broken  with  all  that  bound 
him  to  the  old  home :  at  the  time  of  his  being  outlawed 
he  was  at  Louvain  ;  how  long  he  remained  there  does 
not  appear,  but  at  the  end  of  1598  he  was  once  more  in 
England,  and  was  at  last  regularly  commissioned  as  a 
Jesuit  Father.  On  his  first  arrival  we  hear  of  him  as 
going  down  to  Norfolk  once  more  in  company  with  Bernard 


330  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

Gardiner;  but  the  pursuivants  were  on  his  track — there 
was  a  ver}?-  dihgent  search  of  the  houses  of  the  Catholic 
gentry  in  Suffolk  and  Norfolk.  Edward  Yelverton  among 
others  was  thrown  into  prison,  and  the  two  cousins  were 
in  very  great  peril.  They  eluded  their  pursuers,  however, 
and  Bernard  Gardiner  from  this  time  disappears  from  our 
notice.  Edward  Walpole  seems  never  to  have  left  England 
again.  At  the  end  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  reign  he  was  living 
with  "  old  Mr.  Cotton,  of  Swanborow  in  Sussex,"  who 
may  have  been  perhaps  a  friend  and  neighbour  of  William 
Walpole  at  the  time  that  he  was  settled  at  Frittleworth.29 

At  the  accession  of  James  I.  some  little  less  rigour  began 
to  be  shown  to  the  Catholics,  and  amongst  other  instances 
of  the  king's  leniency  was  his  grant  of  a  pardon  to  Edward 
Walpole,  dated  4th  April,  1605,  which  it  is  presumed  that 
Calibut  obtained  through  the  interest  of  friends  at  court.  3° 
A  year  or  two  after  this  he  was  stationed  somewhere  near 
Oxford,  and  passing  under  the  name  of  B,ic]i^  as  he  had 
some  years  before  passed  by  the  name  of  'PoorJ>^  His 
mother  died  in  1612,  and  by  virtue  of  his  pardon  he  might 
if  he  had  pleased  have  entered  upon  the  Houghton 
estate ;  but  instead  of  doing  so  he  executed  a  deed  of  gift 
in  which  he  renounced  all  claim  to  his  paternal  estates, 
and  transferred  them  absolutely  and  unconditionally  to  his 
brother. 32  In  1623  his  name  appears  as  one  of  the  "Jesuits 
in  and  about  London,"  and  again  in  1627  we  catch  a 
glimpse  of  him  as  still  there.  In  London,  too,  he  died, 
on  the  3rd  November,  1637,  in  his  seventy-eighth  year.33 
For  thirty-nine  years  he  worked  as  a  Catholic  priest  in 
England,  liable  to  be  arrested  at  any  moment,  to  be  thrown 
into  jail,  and  butchered  in  the  barbarous  way  then  in 
vogue ;  but  he  never  was  taken,  and  the  later  years  of  his 
life  he  must  have  passed  in  comparative  quiet  and  security. 
I  have  seen  it  stated  somewhere  that  he  had  a  great  gift 
as  a  preacher,  and  no  one  seeing  his  magnificent  hand- 
writing in  the  album  of  the  Tournai  Noviciate — where  it 
strikes  the  eye  among  that  of  hundreds  of  others  who 
have  with  their  own  hands  recorded  their  brief  and  often 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  33 1 

touching  autobiographies — could  believe  that  he  was  an 
ordinary  man.  His  only  brother  Calibut  survived  him  less 
than  nine  years,  and  was  buried  at  Houghton  in  May  1646, 
just  thirty  years  before  his  lineal  descendant,  the  great 
Sir  Kobert  Walpole,  there  first  saw  the  light.  The  heavy 
fine  and  the  expense  inseparable  from  obtaining  the  pardon 
must  have  seriously  taxed  Calibut  Walpole's  resources, 
though  he  married  an  heiress ;  and  the  estates  must  have 
been  encumbered  when  he  entered  into  possession.  Of 
the  next  generation  we  know  litttle  or  nothing,  and  it 
was  not  till  the  days  of  Sir  Edward  Walpole,  Sir  Kobert's 
grandfather,  that  the  fortunes  of  the  house  began  to  rise 
again.34 


My  task  is  done  and  my  story  told.  I  am  not  so  sanguine 
as  to  hope  that  my  readers  will  take  as  lively  an  interest 
in  the  results  of  my  researches  as  I  have  myself  taken  in 
pursuing  them.  As  my  work  has  proceeded,  the  England 
of  Queen  Elizabeth's  days  has  become  to  me  an  altogether 
different  land  from  the  England  I  had  formerly  imagined  it 
to  be  :  the  conflict  with  Eome  has  gradually  unfolded  itself 
as  a  problem  which  must  remain  unintelligible  to  the  merely 
political  historian  :  the  homes  and  habits  of  life  and  thought 
of  men  and  women  of  the  gentry  class  have  revealed 
themselves  in  quite  unexpected  forms  and  colours ;  and 
light  has  gleamed  from  many  a  dark  corner,  whence  it  was 
least  hoped  that  any  ray  could  shine.  Who  that  sets  forth 
upon  a  voyage  of  discovery  ever  knows  whither  he  may  be 
carried  ?  A  man  sooner  or  later  puts  into  port  again,  and 
shows  the  world  his  gains,  and  the  world  peradventure 
counts  them  little  worth  ;  but  for  him,  he  has  visited  strange 
lands  and  sailed  into  unknown  waters,  and  in  his  enlarged 
experience  and  the  memories  of  the  long  quest  he  finds  his 
best  reward. 

To  some  perhaps  the  chief  interest  of  this  family  chronicle 
will  lie  in  the  fact  that  the  great  minister  whose  name  is  a 
part  of  England's  history  became  in  the  sequel  the  head  of 


332  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

this  house  with  "one  generation  "  of  which  we  have  been 
concerned  ;  but  so  to  read  the  story  is  to  miss  its  true  point 
and  lesson.  Of  course  it  is  interesting  to  reflect  that  in  Sir 
Eobert's  boyhood  and  early  manhood  the  memories  and 
traditions  of  the  persecuting  days  were  still  fresh,  and 
matters  of  common  parlance ;  and  that  there  must  have 
been  men  still  alive  at  Houghton  who  had  talked  with  the 
outlawed  Jesuit  Father,  after  he  had  voluntarily  resigned  his 
inheritance,  and  with  his  brother,  who  had  saved  the  estates 
from  forfeiture  ;  but  the  real  value  of  the  story  lies  rather  in 
this,  tha,t  it  is  one  which,  mutatis  mutandis,  might  be  told 
of  fifty  families  in  England,  which  were  rich  and  prosperous 
in  the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  were  simply 
reduced  to  beggary  for  conscience'  sake  before  James  I.  came 
to  the  throne. 

This  Norfolk  House,  whatever  it  may  have  been  two 
centuries  before,  was  certainly  not  one  of  the  great  govern- 
ing families  in  the  sixteenth  century,  though  it  seemed  on 
the  point  of  rising  to  the  very  first  rank.  Had  Serjeant 
Walpole  lived  only  a  year  or  two  longer,  he  would  have 
been  raised  to  the  Bench  in  the  ordinary  course ;  as  it  was, 
to  his  son  any  career  was  open.  When  that  son  died 
childless,  and  his  large  possessions  were  added  to  those 
which  Edward  Walpole,  as  the  heir  of  Houghton,  might  one 
day  have  enjoyed,  a  brilliant  future  seemed  to  be  opening. 
It  is  clear  that  in  this  generation  there  was  an  abundance 
of  energy,  ambition,  and  intellectual  power ;  but  wealth  and 
talent  and  birth  and  splendid  opportunities  were  sacrificed 
to  that  which  we  call  conscientious  conviction,  and  with  the 
ball  at  their  feet  these  Walpoles  resigned  the  game.  So  did 
others  whose  prospects  were  scarcely  less  promising  than 
theirs, — others  whose  names  have  gone  down  to  silence ; 
others  from  whom  no  Prime  Minister  sprang ;  who  were 
not  saved  from  ruin  by  any  fortunate  conjunction  of  circum- 
stances, and  whose  cup  of  bitterness  was  drained  to  the 
dregs. 

"But  they  were  contumacious,  they  were  perverse,  they 
were  wrongheaded,  they  would  not  bend  to  the  times,  they 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  333 


did  not  understand  the  spirit  of  the  age."  Be  it  so !  And 
they  counted  the  cost,  and  they  did  not  shrink  from  the 
penalty  and  the  pain.  Living  or  dying,  they  did  not  play 
the  craven.  "But  their  creed  was  other  than  ours." 
Granted  again !  So  was  Henry  Barrow's  and  John 
Greenwood's,  and  many  another's — men  whose  carcasses 
the  hangman  outraged,  and  whose  disciples  claim  them 
now  as  glorious  martyrs  for  the  truth.  These  men  were 
of  the  same  stuff  that  Latimer  and  Eowland  Taylor  were 
made  of;  they  were  animated  by  the  same  enthusiasm, 
supported  by  the  same  intense  earnestness,  hurried  along 
by  the  same  fiery  zeal,  as  free  from  vulgar  worldliness,  and 
as  sincere.  Surely,  surely  they  deserve  at  least  a  portion 
of  the  same  honour !  Let  us  not  grudge  it  them  :  it  is  all 
the  atonement  we  can  make  for  the  cruel  wrongs  of  an  age 
when  toleration  was  looked  upon  as  a  crime,  and  pity  for 
the  erring  was  a  sentiment  unknown. 


NOTES  TO   CHAPTER  XIII. 

1.  Page  312.  Chancery  Fine  Rolls,  44°  Elizabeth,  Mich,  term  ;  Lay 
Subsidy  Rolls,  1°  James  I.,  P.  E.  0.  In  the  P.  R.,  St.  Stephen's,  Norwich, 
is  the  entry  of  his  marriage  :  "  1608,  21°  Febry.  Mr.  Jeffry  Walpole  of 
Dussingham  in  Norf.  and  M^"  Dorothy  Beckham  of  the  same  Towne 
were  maryed  '^  licenciam." 

2.  Page  312.  Christopher  Walpole's  inq.  p.m.  was  held  at  Fakenham 
1st  September,  38°  Elizabeth  (1596).  It  sets  forth  that  on  the  9th  March, 
1596,  he  had  made  over  to  Thomas  Walpole  his  son  three  messuages 
and  about  500  acres  of  land,  exclusive  of  two  fold-courses  in  Anmer  and 
Dersingham,  reserving  his  own  life  interest  and  "  unum  conclave  et 
cubiculum  parcellam  premissorum  predictor um  in  Anmer  predicta,  ad 
usum  cuiusdam  Margerie  ad  tunc  uxoris  eius  pro  termino  vitse  eiusdem 
Margerie."  His  will  was  made  8th  May,  1596:  in  it  (according  to  the 
inquisition,  for  the  will  itself  has  disappeared)  he  leaves  to  Geoffrey  a 
messuage  and  about  300  acres,  together  with  a  fold-course  called 
Eastling  Course,  in  Dersingham.  According  to  this  document  it  appears 
that  the  Anmer  property  made  over  to  Thomas  was  more  than  double 
the  value  of  that  in  Dersingham  bequeathed  to  Geoffrey.  What  the 
acreage  or  value  of  the  fold-courses  was  it  is  now  quite  impossible  to 
determine,  as  the  number  of  sheep  running  upon  them  is  not  specified. 
— Chancery  Inq.  p.  m.,  38  Elizabeth,  Part  I.  No.  51. 

3.  Page  313.  ^'  Richardus  Walpolus,  Anglus,  Norfolciensis  diocesis, 
annorum  22,  aptus  ad  logicam,  receptus  fuit  in  hoc  Anglorum  Collegium 
inter  Alumnos  S'"'  D.  N.  Sixti  Papse  V.,  a  P.  Alfonso  Agazario,  Societatis 
Jesu,  hujus  coUegii  rectore,  de  expresso  manda  to  111™  D"'  Cardinalis  S. 
Sixti,  hujus  CoUegii  Protectoris,  sub  die  25th  Aprilis  1585."  [He  took 
the  College  oath,  2nd  February,  1586].  .  .  .  *' Factus  est  subdiaconus26. 
Novemb:  Diaconus  30.  Novemb :  Sacerdos  3.  Decemb  :  1589.  Missus 
est  in  Hispaniam,  ut  inde  trajiceret  in  Angliam." — Ex  Archivis  CoUegii 
Anglorum  in  Urbe,  MS.  No.  303,  fol.  23. 

His  desire  to  enter  the  Society  of  Jesus  is  referred  to  by  his  brother 
Henry  in  a  letter  which  bears  internal  evidence  of  having  been  written 
in  the  summer  of  1585,  i.e.,  at  the  time  when  Richard  Walpole  was  at 
the  English  College. — Walpole  Letters,  xix.  n.  3. 

4.  Page  313.    Fa.  Greeners  Collectanea,  Stonyhurst  3ISS.,  Angl.  A.  ^ 
II.  No.  15. 

334 


ONE   GENERATION  OF  A   NORFOLK  HOUSE    335 

5.  Page  314.     Spedding's  hifc  and  Letters  of  Francu  Bacon,  vol.  ii. 
p.  109.     For  the  narrative  given  in  the  text  I  have  not  only  consulted 
the  ordinary  authorities,  but  I  have  taken  some  pains  to  sift  all  the 
evidence  which  recent  research  had  laid  open  to  us.     For  the  benefit 
of  those  who  choose  to  test  my  accuracy,  I  have  at  the  end  of  this  note 
subjoined  some  few  references  which  may  be  readily  turned  up  by  such 
as  have  access  to  any  public  library.  One  document,  however,  though  very 
few  living  men  can  have  ever  seen  or  are  likely  to  see  it,  was  procured 
for  me  by  the  late  Hon.  Frederick  Walpole  several  years  ago.     It  is  a 
copy  of  Richard  Walpole^s  own  letter  to  Father  Garnet  in  reply  appar- 
ently to  a  quest  that  he  should  draw  up  a  vindication  of  himself  from  the 
charges  made  against  him.     The  original  is  preserved  in  the  archives  of 
the  College  at  Valladolid,  and  is  a  long  and  verbose  document.     After 
some  hesitation  I   decided   that    it  was    not    worth   printing,   though 
authorised  to  print  it  by  a  letter  from  Mr.  John  Guest,  whom  I  assume  to 
have  been  Rector  of  the  College  at  Valladolid  at  the  time  the  transcript 
was  made.     No  one  reading  Richard  Walpole's  own  account  of  the  affair 
could  doubt  that  the  story  which  he  gives  is  the  true  one,  even  if  it  were 
not  corroborated  as  strongly  as  it  is  by  the  cumulative  evidence  which 
supports  it. 

Mr.  Spedding  is  mistaken  in  supposing  that  the  Authentic  Memoirs  of 
that  exquisitely  villai7ious  Jesuit,  Father  Richard  Walpole,  published  in 
1733,  was  printed  from  the  original  edition  which  appeared  in  1599. 
Through  the  kindness  of  my  friend  Mr.  G.  Napier,  of  Alderley  Edge,  I 
have  had  the  opportunity  of  minutely  collating  the  two  editions,  and  I 
feel  no  hesitation  in  pronouncing  that  they  were  printed  from  two 
different  manuscripts.  There  is  nothing  to  show,  but  quite  the  contrary, 
that  the  printer  or  editor  of  the  1733  book  had  ever  seen  or  heard  of  any 
earlier  printed  copy.  Unfortunately  my  edition  of  Carleton's  Thankful 
Remembrance  (second  edition,  1625)  does  not  contain  this  tract.  Mr. 
Spedding  will  be  glad  to  learn  that  Father  Henry  More  expressly  refers 
to  the  tract,  which  he  has  reprinted  in  his  edition  of  Bacon^s  Letters  as 
^'Baconus  in  litteris  ad  amicumPatavii.^^ — Cal.  P.R.O.,  'Domestic,  Eliza- 
beth, 1595-7,  pp.  209,  255  ;  ibid.  1598-1601.  See  Index  ;  Foley's  Records, 
series  ii.-iv. ;  Spedding's  Life  and  Letters  of  Bacon,  vol.  ii.  book  ii.  ch.  v. ; 
Henry  More's  Hist.Prov.  Anglicc,  lib.  v.  §§  34,  35;  Camden's  Elizabeth, 
book  iv.  p.  132,  in  Kennett's  Complete  History  of  England,  fol.  vol. 
ii.;  Ellis's  Letters,  vol.  iii.  p.  189,  second  series;  Lingard's  Elizabeth, 

App.  B.B.B. 

6.  Page  315.  The  Life  of  Dona  Luisa  de  Carvajal  was  written 
by  Michael  Walpole  not  long  after  her  death,  and  the  original  MS. 
is  still  preserved  in  the  Convent  of  the  Encarna^ion  at  Madrid;  "it  is 
composed  of  a  series  of  separate  sheets,  about  two  hundred  leaves  in  all," 
and  was  examined  by  Dr.  Juan  Riafio  in  November  1874,  permission 


336  ONE  GENERATION  OF 

having  been  obtained  to  inspect  it  from  the  Vicario  Capitular  of  Santiago 
de  Galicia,  not  without  considerable  difficulty.  Large  extracts  were 
subsequently  made  for  me  and  copies  taken  of  letters  and  contemporary 
documents,  by  Dr.  Riaiio,  transcripts  of  which  are  in  my  possession. 
This  biography  and  the  manuscript  collections  which  accompany  it  were 
used  by  the  Licenciate  Luis  Munoz,  and  very  closely  followed  in  drawing 
up  his  Vida,  y  Virtudes  de  la  Venerable  Virgen  Doiia  Luisa  de  Carvaial  y 
Mendoga  .  .  .  which  was  dedicated  to  Philip  IV.  and  published  at 
Madrid,  in  4to,  in  1632.  The  book  is  one  of  very  great  rarity,  and  it 
was  only  after  searching  for  it  for  years  that  I  was  fortunate  enough  to 
procure  a  copy  through  the  kind  offices  of  Don  Pascuale  de  Gatangos. 
From  Muiioz'  work  Lady  Georgiana  Fullerton  compiled  her  Life  of 
Luisa  de  Carvajal,  which  was  published  by  Burns  and  Gates  in  1873. 
Of  course  this  latter  is  one  of  that  class  of  devotional  biographies  which 
are  distasteful  to  some  people,  but  the  main  facts  of  the  biography  are 
capable  of  proof.  In  Southey's  Letters  written  during  a  Journey  in  Spain 
(third  edition),  published  in  two  volumes,  1808,  there  is  (vol.  i.  pp.  259- 
302)  an  abstract  of  Munoz'  work,  and  a  long  account  of  Dona  Luisa 
characterised  by  Southey's  usual  robust  good  sense ;  it  is  a  chapter  very 
well  worth  reading. 

7.  Page  317.     Spedding,  u.s.,  vol.  ii.  p.  109. 

8.  Page  317.  The  examinations  are  printed  in  extenso  by  Foley, 
Records,  u.s. 

9.  Page  321.  Liturgies  and  Occasional  Forms  of  Prayer  set  forth  in  the 
reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth  (Parker  Society,  1847),  p.  679. 

10.  Page  321.  The  "abstract  of  certain  letters"  mentioned  in 
the  text  is  to  be  seen  in  Father  Greene's  Collect.,  Angl.  A.,  vol.  iii.  No. 
19,  Stonyhurst  3ISS.  For  the  authority  for  Eichard  Walpole's  pro- 
selytising, &c.,  in  Spain,  see  Winwood's  Memorials,  vol.  ii.  pp.  136,  151, 
178,  &c.  For  his  death,  Oliver's  Collections.  From  Father  Greene's 
Collect.,  Angl.  N.  ii.,  it  appears  that  he  translated  into  Latin  Parsons' 
Memorial  for  the  Reformation  of  England.  The  Latin  version  has  never 
been  printed.  In  a  list  of  Letters  of  Parsons  in  Greene's  Angl.,  P.  ii,, 
Stonyhurst  MSS. ,  one  bearing  the  date  of  October  15th,  1607,  is  addressed 
to  Father  Cresswell,  and  treats  *'  Of  the  great  dissension  betwixt  him 
and  F.  Ric.  Walpole,  that  hath  caused  extreme  damage  to  the  seminaries 
and  great  disorder  in  the  seminary,  which  F.  Cresswell  seemeth  to  have 
bin  cause  or  occasion  [sic}  never  ending  these  difficulties  with  F.  Parsons 
and  other  fathers  .  .  •  the  disorders  were  cause  that  many  schollars 
went  to  the  Benedictines." 

11.  Page  322.  MS.  No.  303,  f .  39,  247  ;  Ex.  Archivis  Coll.  Anglic,  in 
urbe.    He  was  admitted  into  the  college  22nd  February,  1592. 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  337 


12.  Page  323.  For  his  entering  the  Society  the  authority  is  the  MS. 
last  quoted ;  for  his  being  in  England  in  1606  see  Morris,  Condition  of 
Catholics  under  James  I.,  p.  Ixv.  For  the  other  statements  in  this 
paragraph  I  must  ask  my  readers  to  take  my  word  for  the  fact  that  they 
are  made  on  the  authority  of  transcripts  from  MSS.  in  the  Bihl.  Nacional 
and  the  Bihlioteca  de  la  Academia  de  la  Historia  at  Madrid  ;  from 
Archives  at  Simancas,  and  the  autograph  Life  of  Dona  Luisa  in  the 
Convent  of  the  Encarnapion.  These  transcripts  (now  in  my  possession) 
were  made  by  Dk.  Riano,  whose  name  is  a  sufficient  guarantee  for  their 
fidelity.  I  cannot  thank  that  accomplished  scholar  enough  for  the 
masterly  way  in  which  the  work  was  done  which  he  so  kindly  under- 
took.    See,  too,  Records  of  S.J. ,  Collectanea,  part  ii.  pp.  1005,  1051. 

13.  Page  323.  He  was  a  Cambridge  man  and  fellow  of  Christ's 
College.  In  1594  he  held  a  stall  at  Chester ;  in  1598  he  was  made  a 
Prebendary  of  St.  Paul's.  He  was  promoted  to  the  See  of  Derry  6th 
December,  1616. — Le  Neve's  Fasti  and  Cotton's  Fasti  Eccl.  Hib.  iii. 
317.  His  Treatise  concerning  Antichrist  was  published  in  4to,  1604. 
For  Michael  Walpole's  Answer  to  it,  see  Oliver's  Collect. 

14.  Page  324.  There  is  a  letter  of  Abbot's  on  the  subject  of  the  reli- 
gious services  at  the  Spanish  ambassador's  house  in  the  P.  R.  0.  An 
abstract  is  given  in  the  Cal.  Dora.  1611-8,  p.  140.  Munoz,  p.  174, 
tells  the  story  of  the  assault  on  Dona  Luisa's  house.  See,  too.  Lady 
Georgiana  Fullerton's  Life  of  Doha  Luisa.  For  the  other  details  men- 
tioned in  the  text  I  must  again  refer  to  MSS.  penes  me.  Michael 
Walpole's  letter  to  Gondomar  is  in  the  library  of  Don  Pascuale  de 
Gayangos. 

15.  Page  324.  Vidtation  of  Norfolk,  vol.  i.  p.  373,  published  by  the 
Norfolk  ami  Norwich  Archceological  Society. 

16.  Page  325.  The  Subsidy  Rolls  are  in  the  Record  Office.  They 
were  formerly  kept  in  the  Tower  and  Exchequer.  The  Presentments  of 
Recusants  to  the  bishop  were  made  annually,  and  sometimes  oftener, 
by  the  churchwardens.  In  the  Ep.  Registry  at  Norwich  there  is  a  very 
imperfect  collection  of  them  bound  up  into  a  ragged  volume.  Two  of 
these  lists  were  printed  in  the  East  Aiiglian.  I  have  been  through  them 
all :  for  genealogical  purposes  they  are  of  some  value. 

17.  Page  326.  For  the  larger  part  of  this  paragraph  I  am  indebted 
to  Mr.  Foley :  see,  too,  Oliver's  Collect.  This  Christopher  Walpole's 
name  appears  on  a  list  of  Novices,  1625,  printed  in  Foley,  Records, 
series  i.  p.  132. 

18.  Page  326.     Walpole's  Letters,  p.  13, 

19.  Page  326.     ib.,  Letter  VI.  n.  2. 

22 


338 


ONE   GENERATION  OF 


20.  IP  age  326.  Harrison  says  that  a  gentleman  could  in  his  young 
days  live  on  £10  a  year,  and  many  instances  might  be  adduced  of  an 
annuity  of  this  amount  being  left  to  younger  sons  by  men  of  large 
means.    For  a  case  in  point  see  ch.  vii.  n.  9. 

21.  Tacje  327.  "  I  am  glad  to  hear  of  Bernard  Gardiner's  oath.  God 
send  him  constancy  and  health,  if  not  Rhemes ;  for  I  would  be  sorry 
he  should,  from  so  happy  an  estate,  return  to  be  a  soldier  to  his  own  dis- 
comfort.^^— WalpoWs  Letters,  p.  29. 

22.  Page  327.  Father  Henry  More  mentions  his  reluctance  to  take 
Holy  Orders,  and  his  narrow  escape  from  shipwreck. — Hist.  Prov.  Angl.^ 
lib.  V.  §  33.  It  is  plain,  too,  from  the  Letters  of  H.  Walpole,  that  he 
did  not  leave  England  with  any  intention  of  entering  the  priesthood. — 
iv.  4,  V.  5,  vi.  3. 

23.  Page  328.  "  Vulgato  itaque  reditu  cum  susque  deque  quererentur 
plurimorum  apud  Norfolcienses  et  Suffolcienses  cedes  ut  unum  hunc 
reperirent,  aliquanta  collects  pecunia  rursus  trajecit  .  .  .  ."  Calibut 
Walpole  married  in  1591. — More's  Hist.  Prov.  lib.  Angl.,  v.  §  32  ;  Collins's 
Peerage  by  Sir  Egerton  Brydges,  v.  648. 

24.  Page  328.  The  following  is  a  copy  of  Edward  Walpole's  account 
of  himself,  written  with  his  own  hand  in  the  Album  of  the  Noviciate 
of  Tournai.  This  MS.  is  now  in  the  Royal  Library  at  Brussels,  in 
admirable  preservation  (MS.  No.  1016,  p.  210).  I  went  carefully  through 
it  in  1874. 


Ego  Edouardus  Walpolus 
Examinatus  fui  a  P. 
Joanne  Bargio  juxta 
Examen  Novitiorum 
18  Decembris,  1593. 
Rursus  23  Junii,  1594,  et 
16  Decetnhris,  1594,  et 
rursus  16  Junii  1595. 
Exiyerimenta  hcec  feci 
Exercitia  Spiritualia. 
Secundum  et  tertium 
comvmtata  fuerunt 
in  officia  humilia,  quce 
exercui  juvando  prcefectum 
Refectorii,  hebdomadis  decern, 
et  postea  adhuc  quatuor, 
Quartum  ex  professo  obivi 
in  dojno  Probationis  serviendo 
coquo  hebdomadibus  quatuor. 


Ego  Edouardus  Walpolus  Norfol- 
ciensis  in  Anglia  natus  circiter  annum 
1562.  Patre  Joanne  Walpolo  viro 
nobili  vita  functo,  matre  Catherina 
Callibutta  adhuc  superstite.  Studui 
Grammaticse  et  humanioribus  litteris 
in  patria  circiter  4:°^^  annos  et  in  Acad- 
emia  Cantabrigiensi  totidem,  RomsB  in 
Seholis  Soc^'s  Theologige  Scholasticae 
duobus  annis,  majori  ex  parte  langu- 
ens,  medio  anno  casubus  conscientiae. 
Ibidem  promotus  fui  ad  tonsuram  et 
4°''  minores  ordines  quinque  diversis 
diebus  in  quadragesima  anno  1592  :  ad 
Subdiaconatum  Sabbato  Sancta :  ad 
Diaconatum  feria  secunda  Paschatis 
eodem  anno,  in  Basilica  S'  Joannis 
Lateranensis  a  Suffraganeo  Summi 
Pontificis :   ad   Sacerdotium  in  Festo 


A  NORFOLK  HOUSE 


339 


Quintum  et  Sextum,  oh  iyno- 
rantiam  lingucc  Gallicce^ 
ohire  non  potui,  idcirco  eorum 
loco  comitatus  sum  aliquoties 
emptorem  ad  forum,  et  id 
genus  alia  ojicia  humilitatis 
ohivi. 

Ego  Edouardus  Walpolus 
cum  venia  R.  P.  Georgii 
Durcei  [?]  Provincialis 
emid  vota  privata  juxta 
consuetam  <S'oc''"  formulam 
Sacrum  celebrante  P. 
Joanne  Bargio  in  sacello 
Domus  Probationis  Tornacensis 
Soc^^  Jesu  ipso  die  Nativitatis 
Christi  Anno  1594. 


Missus  est  ad 
Collegium  Lovaniense 
8  Julii  1595 


Ascensionis  Domini  in  Ecclesia  Col- 
legii  Anglicani  a  Reverendissimo  Duo 
Odoeno  Epo  Cassanensi.  Admissus  fui 
ad  Soc'c'"  Jesu  a  R^^  Patre  Oliverio 
Manareo  Proeposito  Provinciali  in 
Belgio,  ex  commendatione  R'^'  P.  N. 
Generalis  Claudii  Aquavivse.  Veni  Ad 
domum  Probationis  Tornacensem  4 
Julii  anno  1593,  et  examinatus  fui  a 
P.  Joanne  Bargio  juxta  examen  gene- 
rale  ejusdem  Soc^'^  Diplomate  Apos- 
tolica  instituti.  Duas  constitutiones 
ejusdem  conformatorias  Gregorii  13  et 
Gregorii  14,  et  regulas  ejusdem  Soc''s 
perlegi.  Habeo  propositum  vivendi  et 
moriendi  in  Soc^^  Jesu,  et  omnia,  tarn 
qusB  in  examine,  quam  quae  in  supra- 
dictis,  proposita  sunt,  observare  de- 
sidero  ac  propono,  nominatim  quod  ad 
obedientiam  et  promptitudinem  animi, 
ad  serviendum  Deo,  ubique  et  in 
qua  vis  re,  item  quae  ad  indifferentiam 
ad  quemvis  gradum  Sock's  et  ad  red- 
dendam  rationem  Conseientise  mani- 
festationemque  meorum  defectuum 
pertinet.  Contentus  sum,  ut  res  quse- 
cunque  quae  in  me  notatee  et  observatae 
fuerint,  per  quemvis,  qui  extra  con- 
fessionem  eas  acceperit,  superioribus 
manifestenter.  Paratus  quoque  sum 
ad  correctionem  aliorum  juvare,  alios- 
que  manifestare  secundum  voluntatem 
et  preescripta  superioris  ad  majorem 
Dei  gloriam  ;  necnon  ad  omnia  officia 
Societatis,  qu^  a  superiore  injunge- 
rentur  mihi  indifferentem  me  offero. 
Promitto  autem  me  relicturum  omnia 
bona  post  elapsum  ab  ingressu  meo 
annum,  quandocunque  id  a  superiore 
meo  injungetur.  In  quorum  fide  heee 
mea  manu  scripsi  et  subsignavi. 

Actum  Tornaci  in  Domo  Probationis 
Societatis  Jesu  15  Julii,  Anno  1593. 
Ita  est 
Edouakdus  Walpolus. 


340  ONE   GENERATION  OF 

25.  "Page  328.     Controlment  Roll,  38°  Eliz.,  P.  R.  0. 

26.  Page  329.  Special  Commissioners,  Suffolk,  37°  Eliz.,  concerning 
the  possessions  of  Edw.  Walpole,  late  of  Houghton  near  Harpley,  P.  R.  0. 
This  inquisition  was  held  at  Bury  St.  Edmunds.  For  the  inquisition 
held  at  Dereham,  see  Special  Commissioners,  Norfolk,  37°  Eliz.,  No. 
1611. 

27.  Page  329.     Domestic,  Elizabeth,  vol.  cclxiv.  n.  70. 

28.  Page  329.  The  main  facts  of  this  business  are  given  in  the  case 
drawn  up  for  the  opinion  of  Sir  Matthew  Hale,  which  I  have  before 
referred  to.  When  it  is  said  that  a  fine  of  £1,600  would  be  "  equivalent 
to  a  charge  upon  any  estate  in  Norfolk  of  £20,000,"  the  reader  must  be 
warned  that  I  do  not  mean  to  dogmatise  upon  that  extremely  difficult 
question  of  the  comparative  value  of  money  in  the  sixteenth  century  and 
in  the  nineteenth,  but  simply  to  express  my  very  strong  conviction  that 
a  charge  of  £1,600  upon  a  given  acreage  in  1598  would  be  at  least  as 
heavy  as  a  charge  of  £20,000  upon  the  same  acreage  in  our  own  days. 
This  is  not  the  time  nor  the  place  to  discuss  a  question  which  involves 
so  many  considerations. 

29.  Page  330.  Foley's  Records,  ser.  ii.-iv.  p.  265,  and  ser.  i.  p.  146  ; 
Morris's  Troubles,  ser.  i.  p.  192. 

30.  Page  330.  On  the  attitude  of  James  I.  towards  the  Catholic 
gentry  at  the  beginning  of  his  reign,  see  Gardiner's  History  of  England 
from  the  Accession  of  James  I.  to  the  Disgrace  of  Coke,  vol.  i.  p.  109  et 
seq.  My  authority  for  the  granting  of  the  pardon  is  Davey,  Add.  3ISS. 
Brit.  Mus.  19,  092  [Hoxne  Hundred).  Davey  gives  the  date  of  the  pardon, 
4th  April,  2°  James  I. 

31.  Page  330.  More,  Hist.  Prov.  Angl.,  says  he  assumed  the  name  of 
"Pauper  "when  he  first  attempted  to  leave  England  about  1588 ;  for 
his  assuming  the  name  of  "Rich  "  see  Foley,  i.  646,  quoting  Gee's  Foot 
out  of  the  Snare. 

32.  Page  330.  His  mother,  Catherine  Walpole's,  will  is  dated  16th 
June,  5°  James  I.,  and  was  proved  11th  January,  1612,  Cur.  Ep.  Norvic. 
Coker,  f.  269.  The  legacies  are  numerous  and,  for  the  time,  unusually 
large.  The  original  surrender  of  all  claim  on  the  estates  by  Edward  to 
Calibut  Walpole  {penes  me)  is  dated  2nd  May,  1613,  i.e.,  iust  a  year 
after  their  mother's  death. 

33.  Page  330.    Foley's  Records,  series  ii.  p.  264. 


A   NORFOLK  HOUSE  341 

34.  Page  331.  On  Sib  Edward  Walpole,  see  Collins,  v,  651.  His 
only  son  Egbert,  father  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  first  Earl  of  Orford, 
was  a  very  different  man  from  the  rough  boor  and  sot  whom  Coxe, 
strangely,  represents  him  to  have  been.  Dean  Prideaux,  who  had  very 
few  good  words  to  say  of  any  one,  speaks  of  him  as  a  likely  person  to 
succeed  the  Duke  of  Norfolk  as  Lord  Lieutenant  of  the  County,  "and 
beside  him,"  he  adds,  •'  there  is  not  a  man  of  any  parts  or  interest  in  all 
that  party.  To  pitch  on  him  I  reckon  will  be  a  certain  expedient  to 
remove  all  manner  of  divisions  out  of  this  country." — Letters  of  Hum- 
phrey Prideaux  to  John  Ellis  Camden  Society),  p.  195. 


'i 


I 


INDEX 


Abbot,  Archbishop,  323,  337 
Addamson,  William,  244 
Agazario,  Alfonso,  138,  334 
Aldred,  Solomon,  110,  131 
Alexander,  Mr.,  306 
AUen,  Cardinal,  100,  120,  121, 159, 

206,  2-52,  313 
Andrada,  Manuel,  275,  276 
Andrewes,  Launcelot,  Bishop,  114 
Anguish,  Thos.,  110 
Annias,  John,  277 
Antonio,  Don,  275 
Apreece,  Cassandra,  200 

William,  200 

Aquaviva,  Claudius,  138,  210,  283, 

339 
Archenstall,  Eichard,  176 
Arden,  Evan,  290 
Arundell,  Earl,  30,  277,  285,  291 

Countess,  278 

Archbishop,  56 

Mrs.,  247 

Ascham,  Eoger,  59,  82,  101 
Ashley,  Sir  A.,  329 
Audley,  Mr.  E.,  244 
Aylmer,  Bishop,  68,  296 

Bacon,  Anne,  153 

Anthony,  76,  111,  290 

Edmund,  328 

Elizabeth,  328 

Francis,  76,   103,   284,   290, 

292,  317,  318,  320 


—  George,  151 
--  Lady,  82 


Bacon,  Mrs.,  151 

Nathaniel,  179 

Nicholas,  79,  81 

Bagshaw,  818 

Bagster,  Margaret,  60 

Bainbrigg,  Eichard,  76 

Baker,  76 

Baldwin,  William,  296,  308,  310 

Bargius,  139,  338 

Barker,  Thomas,  108 

Barkley,  Sir  E.,  293 

Barlow,  William,  39,  40 

Barnes,  285 

Bameveldt,  John  of,  182 

Barrow,  Henry,  333 

Bartoli,  132,  137,  220 

Basselier,  Father,  132 

Bassett,  97,  98 

Bastard  of  Dunham,  165,  228 

Edward,  240 

Elizabeth,  178 

Francis,  178 

Henry,  240 

Eichard,  240 

Battor,  Stephen,  189 
Baxter,  Eichard,  117 
Beadle,  John,  242 
Beale,  Mr.,  279,  283 
Beaumont,  296,  299,  300,  308 
Beckham,  Dorothy,  311,  334 

Margery,  51 

Eichard,  51 

Beeon,  31,  33 
Bedingfield,  Edmund,  178 
Sir  Henry,  175,  244 


343 


344 


INDEX 


Bedingfield,  Humphrey,  96,  108, 
110,  175,  176,  231,  239,  242 

Nazareth,  178,  179 

Bell,  Thomas,  258 

Bellarmine,  130 

Bennet,  Dr. ,  259 

Bernard,  P.,  242 

Berners,  Lord,  150 

Bettice,  William,  155 

Beza,  122,  123 

Bilney,  143 

Bird,  Hemy,  63,  79 

John,  39,  40,  242 

Bisson,  Ammon  de,  43 

Blackfan,  John,  206 

BlaekweU,  Mr.,  144,  145,  151 

Mrs.,  145,  146,  151,  152,  153, 

154 

Bacon,  151 

Campion,  151,  248 

Draper,  151 

Edward,  151 

George,  151 

Margaret,  152 

Mary,  151 

Eichard,  152 

Thomas,  152 

— -  Walpole,  151 

William,  152,  153,  154 

Arehpriest,  267 

Blount,  Sir  Charles,  273 

Sir  Michael,  283,  291 

Boast,  John,  256 

Bobadilla,  Nicholas,  120 

Bogas,  Mrs.,  244 

Boischot,  de,  323 

Boleyn,  Bridget,  58 

Sir  John,  58 

Bolt,  John,  132 

Borough,  Lord  Thomas,  97 

Margaret,  97 

Boswell,  John,  206 

Bourchier,  150 

Bowes,  Sir  G.,  87 

Bozoun  of  Whissonsett,  165 

Robert,  177 


Bozoun,  Roger,  199 

Bradshaw,  175 

Branthwaite,  Richard,  291 

Briant,  296 

Briddiman,  244 

Brindley,  82 

Bristowe,  115 

Bromley,  Lady  Elizabeth,  153 

Sir  Henry,  291 

Sir  Thomas,  153 

Brown,  the  Separatist,  112 
Browne,  Anne,  155 

Sir  Anthony,  30, 155, 165,  180 

Sir  Thomas,  78 

William,  155 

Buckhurst,  Lord,  243,  274 

Bukke,  John,  63 

Burghley,  William,  Lord,  96,  272, 

273,  V.  Cecil 
Bushe,  Paul,  39,  40 
Butterweck,  Catherine,  151,  155 

Richard,  151,  155 

Butts,  Sir  William,  108 

Cahill,  Hugh,  279,  280 
Calibut,  Andrew,  59,  147 

Anna,  228,  241 

Catherine,  48,  49,  58,  338 

Edgar,  58 

Edward,  59 

Ele,  228 

Francis,  58 

Henry,  59 

James,  59 

John,  58 

Robert,  59 

William,  49,  58,  228 

Call,  Edmund,  155 

Calthorpe,  Lord,  81,  131,  163 

Camden,  112 

Campion,  Edmund,  68,  102,  115, 

118-30,  132,  140,  145,  146, 

158,  252,  296 

Thomas,  146,  152 

Carleton,  Dudley,  317,  335 
Cartwright,  101,  111 


INDEX 


345 


Carvajal,  Luisa  de,  315,  322,  335 
Catesby,  Mary,  178 

Thomas,  178 

Catline,  Richard,  63,  153 
Cecil,  Sir  Robert,  243,  272,  275, 
290 

William,  60,  174,  202,  208, 

209,  219,  242-4, 272, 273, 291 
Chamberlain,  317 
Chambers,  John,  39,  40 
Chapman,  66,  68 
Chepe,  Sir  John,  82 
Clement,  Jacques,  207 
Clere,  Sir  Edward,  177 
Clitherow,  John,  254 

Margaret,  253,  270 

Cobb,  Mary,  231 
Cobbe,  Joan,  48,  61 

of  Sandringham,  54,  76,  84, 

165,  231 

Geoffrey,  60 

William,  231 

Cobham,  William,  243 
Cocket,  Anthony,  57 

Edmund,  164,  178 

Jane,  164,  178 

Margaret,  57 

Coke,  Sir  Edward,  53,  64,  98,  132, 

279,  283,  284,  292,  318,  320 

Robert,  53,  60,  62,  79 

Coldhams  of  Anmer,  325 
Como,  Cardinal  of,  82 
Cornwallis,  Charles,  179,  225,  240, 

241,  321 

Henry,  228,  240 

Richard,  228,  229,  240 

Thomas,  228,  244 

William,  241 

Cottam,  Thomas,  123 

Cotton,  Mr.,  330 

Cranmer,  41,  115,  143 

Cresswell,  Joseph,    S.J.,  132,  192, 

194,  196,  199,  202,  216,  295, 

808,  336 
Crestoval  de  Moro,  214 
Crockett,  Ralph,  45 


Croft,  Sir  James,  109 
Cromwell,  Henry,  Lord,  230 

Thomas,  230,  241 

Dean  of  Wells,  82 

Curzon,  Dorothy,  59 

Daubeny,  Arthur,  84 
Derby,  Earl,  43,  285 
Dereham,  John,  243,  244 
Desmond,  Earl  of,  277 
Devon,  Earl  of,  89 
Diat,  Martin,  155 
Dingley,  George,  258 
Donne,  Elizabeth,  130 

John,  130,  217 

Downes,  Bridget,  109 

Dorothy,  109 

Edward,  109,  110 

Francis,  109,  176,  224,  238 

James,  239 

John,  108,  110 

Lord,  176 

Mr.,  95,  109 

Robert,   108,  109,    175,    176, 

223,  224,  225,  231,  238,  239, 

245 
Downham,  Dr.  G.,  323 
Doyle,  Henry,  238 
Doyly,  Henry,  179 
Drake,  Sir  F.,  290,  314 
Drewe,  Serjeant,  279,  281,  284-7 
Drury,  Bridget,  179,  244 

Dorothy,  105 

Frances,  105 

Henry,  105,  246 

John,  105,  108 

Lady,  247 

Robert,  105,  108 

Sir  William,  105,  164,  244 

Ducket,  Owen,  178 
Dudley,  Amy,  48,  56 
— -  Lord  Robert,  48,  56 
Dugdale,  50 

Edwardes,  319 

Elderton,  William,  133,  135 


346 


INDEX 


Eldred,  Solomon,  110 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  j^amni. 

Elliott,  132,  135 

Elwin,  Judge,  300,  309 

Emerson,  Ealph,  122,  123,  131 

Erasmus,  35 

Essex,  Robert  Devereux,  Earl  of, 

111,  196,  201,    272-6,  290, 

316,  319 
Everard,  Thomas,  246 
Ewens,  Matthew,  296,  300,  308 
Exeter's  wife,  Marquis  of,  30 

Farmer,  Anne,  178 

Henry,  178^ 

Thomas,  155,  178,  179 

Faunt,  Nicholas,  64 

Robert,  79 

Favour,  Dr.,  259 
Feckenham,  Abbot,  74 
Fenner,  Dudley,  75,  84,  172 
Ferriman,  Francis,  309 
Fincham,  Thomas,  178 
Fittleworth,  145 
Fitzgerald,  James,  277 
Fitzherbert,  Thomas,  97,  98 
Fleet,  Thomas,  59 
Fleming,  318 
Fletcher,  Dr.,  291 
Floyd,  H.,  206 
Fontaine,  de  la,  295 
Fortescue,  Edmund,  247 

John, 243 

•  Mistress,  247 

Fowle,  Thomas,  68 
Fox,  John,  81 
Freake,  Bishop,  80,  81,  175 
Freeman,  John,  244 

Thomas,  244 

Fryer,  Dr.,  224 
Fulke,  115 

Fuscinelli,  Octavius,  308 
Fynes,  Mr.,  177 

Gama,  Ferrara  de,  275,  276 
Gardiner,  Anna,  240 


Gardiner,Bernard,of  Coxf  ord  Abbey, 
76,  79,  84, 179, 194, 199,  228, 
230,  240,  242,  327,  330,  338 

Bishop,  30 

George,  Dr.,  66,  67,  68,  78,  79 

Humphrey,  240 

Katherine,  230,  241 

Lyonell,  242 

Sir  Robert,  239 

Thomas,  228 

Gargrave,  Sir  Thomas,  251 

Garnet,  Henry,  115,  283,  284,  285, 
321,  335 

Gayangos,  Don  Pascuale  de,  337 

George,  David,  72 

Gerard,  John,  157-75,  192,  194, 
223,  228,  230,  234,  243,  246- 
50,  285,  294,  322,  326 

Lord,  157 

Sir  Thomas,  157 

Gibbon,  117 

Gifford,  Dr.,  285 

Glasgow,  Archbishop  of,  82 

Goldwell,  Bishop,  39,  99,  121,  123, 
131,  138 

Gondomar,  323,  324,  337 

Goodman,  31,  44 

John,  329 

Goodrich,  John,  199 

Nicholas,  199 

Thomas,  194,  199 

William,  199 

Unica,  199 

Graye,  Robert,  175,  176,  239 

Green,  Father,  336 

Greene,  Robert,  64,  80,  153 

Greenwood,  John,  333 

Gregory  XIII,  Pope,  121 

Grey,  Robert  de,  108 

Grimston,  Christopher,  181 

Grindal,  Bishop,  82 

Guise,  Duke  of,  205,  207 

Gunnes,  Gregory,  290 

Hale,  Sir  M.,  156,  242,  340 
Hall,  Mr.,  63 


INDEX 


347 


Hardesty,  Mr.,  258 
Hare,  Michael,  110 
Harman,  Thomas,  244 
Harryett,  Matthew,  244 
Harrys,  Symon,  244 
Harvey,  Gabriel,  76 

John,  244 

Hastings,  Martin,  60 
Hatton,  Sir  Christopher,  109,  274 
Haugh,  or  Hawe,  64,  65,  78,  80 
Hawkins,  296 

John, 178 

Hay  ward,  James,  116 

Simon,  112 

Heigham,  John,  178 
Hereward,  the  Englishman,  46 
Heydon,  Sir  Christopher,  108,  179 
Heywood,  Eliseus,  114,  130 

Elizabeth,  130 

Jasper,  114,  130 

John, 130 

Mrs.,  247 

Higgens,  George,  304,  305,  309 
Hillyard,  William,  297,  298,  308 
Hilsey,  John,  39,  41 
Hobard,  Mrs.,  244 
Hobbard,  see  Hubbard 
Holbeeh,  Henry,  39,  41 
Holgate,  Kobert,  39 
Holt,  William,  115,  246,  299,  310 
Holtby,  Richard,    267,  268,   270, 

287,  302,  304 
Holtoft,  Gilbert,  57 

Margaret,  48,  49,  58 

William,  58 

Hooker,  Eichard,  114,  309 
Hooper,  Bishop,  41 
Hopital,  Michel  de  1',  185 
Hopton,  Bishop,  39 
Horden,  59 
Home,  Charles,  76 
Houghell,  Bridget,  155 
Houghton,  Adam  de,  47 

Mary,  155 

Howard,  Sir  Philip,  sec  Arundell, 

Earl 


Howards,  the,  30,  243 

Howell,  Richard,  156 

Howes,  James,  155 

Hubbard,  James,  105,  200,  287 

Huddleston,  Edmund,  247 

Hule,  Catherine,  155 

Hunsdon,  243 

Huntingdon,  Henry,  Earl  of,  250-2, 

256-9,  269,  270,  287,  297 
Huss,  119 
Hussey,  James,  329 

Ingram,  218 

Jacques,  Captain,  284 
Jerningham,   or  Jernegan,  Anne, 

244 

Edward,  244 

George,  244 

Sir  Henry,  95,  222,  224,  232, 

238,  243 

Henry,  242,  244 

Jeronyma,  232,  245 

Lady,  95,  223,  243 

Mr.,  232,  242 

Thomas,  244 

William,  244 

Jerome,  119 

Jewell,  Bishop,  66,  114 

Joan,  Queen  Mary's  fool,  243,  244 

Jones,  Nicholas,  111 

Kelke,  Roger,  65 
Kerviles  of  Wiggenhall,  165 
Killigrew,  Sir  H.,  283 
King,  Nicholas,  247 
Robert,  39,  41 


Kingston,  Sir  Anthony,  243 

Lady,  243 

Kirke,  76 

Kirkman,  253 

Kitchin,  Anthony,  39,  41 

Knollys,  Sir  F.,  109,  196 

Knox,  John,  31,  33 

Knyrett,  Catherine,  48,  110 

Edmund,  150,  155 


348 


INDEX 


Knyvett,  Jane,  150 

Sir  Thomas,  110,  155 

Lacey,  William,  252,  253 
Lassey,  Brian,  291,  292 

Richard,  292 

Latimer,  143 
Laynez,  115 

Lay  ton,  Sir  Thomas,  172 
Lee,  William,  133,  135 

Roger,  247 

Leicester,  Robert  Dudley,  Earl  of, 

50,  81,  109,  118,  137,   148, 

150,  182-4,  190,  196,  274 
Le  Strange,  Grisell,  177 

Hamon,  177 

Nicholas,  179 

Thomas,  164,  177,  178 

of  Hunstanton,  61 

Leutner  or  Lucknor,  158,  192 
Limbert,    Stephen,    65,    66,     79, 

80 
Linacre,  James,  246 
Lingam,  George,  45 
Lingen,    Edward,    214,    217,  256, 

260,  262 
Lith,  Thomas,  113 
Longueville,  Viscount,  163 
Lopez,  Roderigo,  275-7,  390 
Lovell,  Lady,  244,  247 

Robert,  109, 175,  239 

Thomas,  109,  175 

Lovering,  Mr.,  78 

Loyola,  103,  114 

Lucie,  Thomas,  194 

Lumner,  Edward,  164,  178,  179 

Jane,  164,  178,  179,  236 

Major,  Anthony,  258 

Manareus,  Oliver,    139,  191,  246, 

328,  339 
Maplisdon,  John,  292 
Markham,  John,  200 
Marshall,  Mr.,  244 
Martin,  Gregory,  115 
Roger,  108,  110 


Mary,  Queen,  27,  28,  30,  31,  32,  ei 

Stuart,  86,  188,  207,  308 

Maurice,  Prince,  205 
Maye,  Henry,  254 
Mayne,  Cuthbert,  100,  101,  120 
Mercurianus,  Everard,  120 
Michell,  William,  155 
Middleton,  Thomas,  253 
Mills,  Jane,  324 
Montford,  Simon  de,  47 
Montmorenci,  205 
More,  Henry,  Dr.,  154,  308,  326, 
335,  338 

Sir  Thomas,  90,  130,  131 

Sir  William,  107 

Morgan,  Mr.,  132 

Morley,  Edward  Parker,  Lord,  227 

Morton,  Dr.,  121 

Morus,  132 

Mulcaster,  Mr.,  112,  232,  242,  243 

Munday,  132,  135,  318 

Mufioz,  Luis,  336,  337 

Murray,  Regent,  207 

Myles,  Mr.  F.,  131 

Nachtegael,  George,  191,  198,  199 

Naunton,  Robert,  64,  79,  80 

Nelson,  John,  101 

Newport,  Grace,  178 

Nichols,  Degory,  76 

Nigrius,  138 

Norfolk,  Thomas  Howard, 4th Duke 

of,  56,  57,  89,  92, 188,  341 
Norreys,  290 

North,  Edward,  Lord,  142 
Northumberland,  Henry  Percy,  9th 

Earl  of,  86,  92,  152 

Countess  of,  146 

Norton,  Richard,  97,  133,  135 

Walter,  175,  177 

Norwich,  William,  Bishop  of,  292 
Nottingham,      Charles      Howard, 

Lord,  296 
Nowell,  Dean,  245 
Robert,  245 


INDEX 


349 


Odoenus,  Bishop,  339 
Oldcorne,  Father,  161,  175 
Oliverius,  Father,  199 

Paget,  Thomas,  3rd  Lord,  124 

Parham,  Edward,  155 

Paris,  Ferdinand,  109,  175,  179 

Philip,  76,  84,  179 

Parker,  Archbishop,  60,  64,  66,  67, 

75,  78,  81,  82,  144 
Parkhurst,   Dr.   John,  Bishop    of 

Norwich,  66,  67,  80,  81 
Parky ns,  45 

Parma,  Prince  of,  189,  199,  205 
Parsons,  Robt.,  75,  104,  112,  115- 

8,  122-6, 130,  140,  145,  158, 

159,  206,  208-12,  216,  258, 

284,  313,  321,  336 
Paston,  John,  240 

William,  240 

Patrick,  Ursula,  151 

Pawlet,  Lady,  244 

Pelham,  SirW.,  183 

Pells  of  Anmer,  325 

Pembroke,  Earl  of,  60 

Percy,  Lady  Mary,  247 

Perez,  Antonio,  277 

Perient,  George,  107 

Perne,  Dr.,  74,  83,  167 

Petre,  Lady,  223,  244 

Peyton,  Sir  John,  175,  179,  317 

Philip  II.,  King  of  Spain,  116,  206 

Philippes,  Nicholas,  244 

Philopater,  Andreas,  208,  209 

Pits,  John,  115 

Pius  v.,  Pope,  87 

Pole,  Reginald,  27,  144 

Ponet,  31,  44 

Possoz,  Father,  197 

Pound,  Thomas,  125 

Powle,  John,  244 

Pratt,  Mr.,  232,  245 

Prideaux,  Dean,  341 

Puckering,  Lord  Keeper,  261,  270, 

278,  283 
Pym,  309 


Quinones,  Alfonso  de,  206 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  290 
Rawlings,  Alexander,  301-6 
Rede,  Thomas,  178 
Redington,  Mr.,  79 
Redman,  Bishop,  227 
Remington,  Robert,  84,  259 
Repps,  Margaret,  239 
Reuchlin,  35 
Rich,  Audrey,  105 

Lord,  105 

Richards,  Ursula,  178 

Ridley,  Bishop,  31 

Robarts,  Jane,  200 

Roberts,  John,  66,  200 

Robsart,  Amy,  48,  49,  56,  57,  118, 

138.     See  Dudley 

Arthur,  57 

Elizabeth,  56 

John,  48,  56,  57 

Lucy,  48 

Sir  Terry,  48 

Rodriguez,  Simon,  120 

Rolls,  317 

Rookwood,   or    Rucwood,    Annie 

244 

Ambrose,  106 

of  Coldhara,  287 

Dorothy,  247 

.  Edward,  94,  106,  108,  109 

of  Euston,  106 

Richard,  247 

Robert,  105 

of  Stanningfield,  106 

Roper,  James,  237 

Rouse,  Anthony,  194,  200,  246 

Rowe,  Mr.,  176 

William,  216 

Rudolph  II.,  119 
Rugg,  William,  39 
Russell,  Mr.,  244 

Captain,  191,  196 

Henry,  228 

Jane,  244 

of  Rudham,  54 


350 


INDEX 


Ryvett,  Jane,  155 

Sir  Thomas,  155,  156 

Sailly,  Thomas,  189 
Salcot,  John,  39 
Salisbury,  Dean,  67,  79 
Salmeron,  Alphonsus,  115 
Sampson,  Abbot,  47 
Sandys,  Archbishop,  251,  309 

Sir  Edwin,  112,  303,  305,  309 

Miles,  84,  284,  309 

Saravia,  Adrian,  308 
Saville,  Serjeant,  298,  309 

Sir  George,  309 

Henry,  309 

Sayve,  William,  239 
Scarlett,  Martha,  155 

Thomas,  53,  60,  62,  156 

Ursula,  155 

Scott,  Bishop,  99 
Selden,  John,  309 
Sheffield,  Lord,  117 
Sherley,  EHzabeth,  247 
Sherwood,  Thomas,  101 
Shrewsbury,  Earl  of,  274 
Sidney,  Sir  H.,  119 
Singleton,  Richard,  138 
Skipwith,  Sir  WiUiam,  200 
Sledd,  132,  135 
Smith,  Richard,  Father,  327 

Thomas,  69,  82,  319 

Souche,  Henry,  132 

Southwell,  Richard,  238 

Robert,  97,  111,  181,  198,  199, 

223,  278,  287,  292,  326 
Speght,  169,  181 
Spelman,  Sir  H.,  41,  60 
Spylman,  Francis,  239 
Squier,  Edward,  314-20 
Standen,  111 
Stanley,  John,  317 
Sir  William,  184-8, 196,  215, 

257,  284 
Stapleton,  115,  130 
Stead,  Anne,  155 
Sterer,  William,  243 


Still,  Mr.,  81 
Strange,  Lord,  285 
Stransham,  or  Potter,  George,  84 
Stubbs,  Dionise,  178 

Richard,  178 

Style,  Lady  Elizabeth,  94,  107 

Sir  Humphrey,  107 

Sucklinge,  Edmund,  292 
Suliard,  Edward,  110,  244 

Lady,  199 

Thomas,  244 

Sutton,  Katherine,  80 
Sydney,  Sir  Philip,  119,  183 
Sir  Robert,  190 

Tassis,  187 

Taylor,  Rowland,  333 

Tello,  Don  Pedro,  314 

Thexton,  Launcelot,  81 

Thirlby,  Henry,  146,  152,  153 

Thomas,  Bishop  of  Ely,  53, 

143,  145,  146,  152,  153 
Thompson,  James,  253 
Mr.    Robert    (Gerard),    166, 

242 
Thorne,  210 
Throgmorton,  50 
Tinoco,  Manuel  Lewis,  275,  276 
Topcliffe,  Richard,  97, 98, 106,  111, 

172,  198,  259,  262,  264,  270, 

277,  278,  279,   281-5,   291, 

296 

Robert,  97 

Townshend,  Marian,  107 

Sir  Robert,  107 

Thomas,  95,  107,  108 

of  Rainham,  165 

Traheron,  31,  44 
Tregian,  Francis,  100 
Tremaine,  Mr.,  247 

Mistress,  247 

Mary,  247 

Vallenger,  128,  137 
Vaux,  Laurence,  121 
Velasco,  Ruis  de,  214 


INDEX 


351 


Verstegan,  111,  197,  285,  292 
Villars,  273 

Waad,  William,  317,  318 

Wade,  174 

Wakeham,  John,  39 

Waldegrave,  Charles,  223,  232,  233, 
243,  245,  287 

Charles  (son),  232,  243,  244 

Christian,  244 

Dorothy,  244 

Edward,  232,  244,  245 

Sir  Edward,  223,  224,  238 

Frances,  243 

Henry,  245 

John,  233,  245 

Lady,  223,  224,  238,  245 

Magdalen,  243 

Nicholas,  245 

Walker,  Dr.  John,  68 

Thomas,  61 

Walpole,  Alan,  55 

Alice,  150 

Beatrix,  55 

of  Broekley,  47 

Calibut,    50,   148,   149,   326, 

328,  329,  338,  340 

Catherine,  58,  151,  153,  340 

Christopher,  48,   50,  51,  59, 

60,  64,  150,  154,  155,  169, 
181,  194,  198,  200,  311 

Christopher  (son),  181,  322, 

334,  337 

Clarice,  55 

Dorothy,  150 

Edmund,  47 

Edward,  48,  49,  65,  76,  77, 

84,  129,  137,  143,  145,  147, 
148,  154, 155,  164,  167,  179, 
180,  193,  199,  220,  230,  242, 
249,  287,  310,  326-30,  338, 
340 

Egeline,  55 

Elizabeth,  58 

Francis,  59 

Galferye,  150 


Walpole,  Geoffrey,  169,  311,  313, 

324,  334 

Henry  of  Herpley,  48,  49-59 

Sir  Henry  de,  46,  47 

Henry,  S.J.,  paasim 

Jane,  151,  155,  200 

Joceline,  55 

John,  48,  49,  50,  57, 143, 148, 

155,  156,  228,  326,  338 

Lemare,  55 

Margaret,  150 

Margery  e,  150 

Mary,  154,  155,  231,  242 

Michael,  150,  154,  168,  169, 

180,  191,  193,  198,321,322, 

324,  337 

Osbert,  55 

of  Pinchbeck,  47 

Radulphus,  47 

Eeginald,  55 

Richard,  49,  107,  142,    149, 

150,  154,  169,   210,  312-6, 

321,  334,  335,  336 

Robert,  341 

Sir  Robert,  329,  331,  341 

Serjeant,  60,  79, 143, 150,  332 

Simon,  47,  55 

Terry,  49,  108 

Thomas,    48,    51,    59,    150, 

155 
Thomas  (son),  170,  194,  200, 

215,  257,  269,  272,  311,  312, 

324,  325,  334 

Thomasine,  324,  325 

William,  42 

William  of  Herpley,  48,   50, 

53,  143,  145,  146,  148,  151, 

152,  153,  154,  329 

WilHam,  Prior  of  Ely,  55 

Walsingham,  Sir  F.,  64,  131,  273, 

274 

Lord,  176 

Warner,  Christopher,  325 

Edward,  63 

Warton,  Edward,  151 
Robert,  39 


352 


INDEX 


Warwick,  John  Dudley,  Earl  of, 

48,  56,  57,  109 
Watson,  99,  246,  326 
Wayte,  Eustace,  291 
Welby,  Kobert,  200 
Wendon,  Nicholas,  69,  82 
Wentworth,  Peter,  277,  291 

Thomas,  Lord,  79 

West,  Robert,  292 
Westmorland,  Earl  of,  86 
Weston,  Father,  122 
White,  Sir  Thomas,  118 
Whitgift,    Archbishop,    101,    111, 

295,  308 
Wilkes,  Sir  Thomas,  279 
Wilkinson,  Michael,  293 
Willoughby,  Sir  Edward,  97 

George,  177 

Joan,  97 

Wilson,  Mr.  Secretary,  109 
Wiltcot,  Mr.,  45 
Windham,  Mr.  Justice,  244 
Wiseman,   Mr.   T.,  247  285,  287, 

292 

Mrs.,  247 

. WiUiam,  247 

Wodehouse,  Francis,  of  Breecles, 

226,  234,  239,  245,  287,  293 
Grisell,  Lady,  179,  234,  236, 

237 

John, 239 

Philip,  of  Kimberley,  164, 178, 

179,233,236,  237,  287,'^  292 
Sir  Eoger,  164,  179,  239  ' 


Wodehouse,  Sir  Thomas,  45 
Wolley,  J.,  243 
Wolsey,  Cardinal,  38,  67 
Wotton,  Lord,  321 
Wyatt,  Sir  Thomas,  44 

Yaxley,  223,  233,  239 

Yelverton,  Anne,  178,  239 

Charles,    155,   164,  177,  179, 

227,  228,  229,  236 

Sir  Charles,  164 

Sir  Christopher,  163 

Edward,  of  Rougham,  76,  84, 

163-7,  178,  199,  226,  231, 

237,    239,    241,  -242,    285, 

330 

Ferdinand,  178 

Frances,  178 

Grisell,  178,  233 

Henry,  163,  178 

Humphrey,  178,  226,  239 

Jane,  164,  178,  179,  180 

Launcelot,  178 

Martha,  118,  239 

William,  155,  163,  177,  178, 

179,  180 
Winifred,  178 


Yepez,  Bishop,  198,  220,  271 
Yorke,  Rowland,  183,  187 
Young,   Richard,    278,    283,    284, 
286,  291 

Zelander,  310 
Zuniga,  Pedro  de,  823 


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